


The Flirting Game

by shadowkissed



Category: TOMORROW X TOGETHER | TXT (Korea Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Drinking, Established Relationship, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Coming Out, Implied/Referenced Underage Drinking, M/M, Making Out, Mentioned Past Bullying, Mentioned major surgery, Nonbinary Choi Yeonjun, Polyamory, beomjun just wanted to casually kiss soobin and it backfired, everyone is in love with choi soobin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-15
Updated: 2020-12-15
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:20:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 30,936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28095303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadowkissed/pseuds/shadowkissed
Summary: There were three unwritten rules to know when you are a part of the humanities and arts department in this university.1. The lounge is only available to freshmen before 8AM and after 6PM2. Fifth cubicle of the third floor’s male bathroom is off-limits3. If you feel any kind of interest towards one of the two infamous Choi, don’t.Soobin was always aware of the first two, but he had to find out the last one in a hard way.(At the end of the day, Choi Beomgyu was still too attractive for his own good in both pastel and goth, and Soobin couldn’t do anything about it because he’s in a relationship with the other famous Choi who rocked pink hair and wore skirts to classes.There was no way someone like them would even look his way without a possible hidden motive.)
Relationships: Choi Beomgyu/Choi Soobin, Choi Beomgyu/Choi Soobin/Choi Yeonjun, Choi Beomgyu/Choi Yeonjun, Choi Soobin/Choi Yeonjun
Comments: 40
Kudos: 271





	1. round 1: escape, boredom, adoration

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Paltita](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Paltita/gifts).



There were three unwritten rules to know when you are a part of the humanities and arts department in this university. 

  1. The lounge is only available to freshmen before 8AM and after 6PM
  2. Fifth cubicle of the third floor’s male bathroom is off-limits 
  3. If you feel any kind of interest towards one of the two infamous Choi, don’t.



Soobin was always aware of the first two, but he had to find out the last one in a hard way. 

**Round 1**

**━━━━━━━ e** **scape, boredom, adoration** **━━━━━━━**

The day started off with a consistent pounding on the back of Soobin’s head. 

Before he could even wonder what’s wrong with his health condition, his eyes landed on the clothes strewn across his bedroom floor. The clothes he wore to the party last night. The fucked up party that just had to take place on a Sunday.

Red blinking numbers on his digital clock was glaring at him, warning him that he only had so little time to stumble into the restroom and make himself presentable for his first class. Yet he found himself lying down on his bed, staring at the ceiling. 

The memories from the party last night came flooding into his mind again.

His initial awkwardness, surprise and excitement for seeing that one pretty boy coming to the party, and then that _kiss_. The kiss that made his cheeks burst with heat from thinking about it alone. 

This is particularly sad on his side seeing that he was _not_ the one being kissed.

It might have something to do with the way Beomgyu looked so different than when they usually met at the library. The sophomore was clad in a simple black shirt that looked great hanging on his frame, the top two buttons messily unbuttoned, and a tiny black scarf tied around his neck. There was a tiny star sticker near a corner of his eyes, which were framed neatly with thin lines of eyeliner. This, added with a trace of glitter smeared messily across his lips from the kiss, made Soobin brain cells slowly give up on life when they talked.

Choi Beomgyu was too attractive for his own good.

It all started with a visit to the library on his first day back in the campus.

The atmosphere felt different, especially since he had to get used to the whole batch again after barely passing his freshman year, and took a year break just to get left behind. The people he did his orientation with had become his seniors now, and he had to get along with these new faces he had never seen. 

He particularly felt bad for the department’s representative that had to take care of him during the whole re-adjustment period, catching him up with whatever changes in the campus and the curriculum.

“Like I said, there’s not many changes around here since you took a leave! This cafe is new, though, let me buy you something, hyung.” 

It was a tiny cafe set up in a corner of the library. Soobin only took a quick glance at the place when the younger - Huening Kai, dashed away from him to order something. Watching the tall guy look so burdened by his presence, he sighed and kept himself in a safe distance, sitting at one of the long tables.

When Kai found him again, it was with a cup of latte, completed with a bunch of whipped cream on top. “This is their best menu, but I wouldn’t know since I don’t drink coffee. Anyway, feel free to hit me up any time, okay? This is a token of our friendship!”

After saying that, the younger had already moved again, not even trying to establish the foundation of this so-called ‘friendship’ aside from the coffee. Soobin couldn’t even drink coffee, so he stayed there and stared blankly out of the big library window while scooping some whipped cream into his mouth with the straw.

He was so deep in thought, that he didn’t notice the appearance of someone joining him at the table, almost jumping when the person talked to him.

“Are you going to drink that?” came the deep voice, gaining his attention right away as well as making his hand jump, causing a drop of the whipped cream to fall off his straw onto the table.

“Ah, I can’t drink coffee, actually,” Soobin said.

Realization dawned on his face. “I was about to get offended. Since I made that.”

“I’m sorry. The whipped cream is really nice though.”

“I’m Beomgyu,” said the guy, just before he extended his arm and wiped the whipped cream stain off the table with the sleeve of his oversized beige cardigan. There were teddy bear patterns drawn all over it, making Soobin smile as he caught them, thinking about how they suited this dark haired stranger a lot. 

The whole soft look that made him look even smaller than he was, challenging his urges to protect him. Or attack, as he would do with cute items.

“My name is Soobin.”

"I know."

He arched a brow at that. "How?"

“The senior who took a year off last year? You were the talk of the town.”

He grimaced at the question. “That’s me.”

“Kai was so nervous about having to take you in, since he’s barely stripped off his freshman title, but you don’t look so mean.”

“He looked scared of me, still.”

“Well, it might be because of the frown,” Beomgyu said. His fingers popped out of the sleeves of his oversized cardigan as he reached out to gently brush his thumbs over the corners of Soobin’s lips. “You’d be more approachable with a smile. Try to smile.”

It took Soobin a few more seconds to proceed with the instruction, because 1) he was too busy staring at the way Beomgyu’s eyelashes casted shadow over his cheek when he blinked and 2) that was such a random request from an almost-stranger. Still, he let his lips naturally stretch out into a smile, and a gasp it elicited from the latter filled him with a kind of accomplishment. Satisfaction.

“You even got dimples! A plus point for making friends in this stupid department.”

“How so?” he arched a brow.

“We like pretty people.”

Beomgyu took his cup of cold latte afterwards, telling Soobin to follow him towards his working space, which turned out to be the little café corner itself. He made another cup of drink for Soobin. A warm one this time, mainly consisted of chocolate and butterscotch syrup. Something drinkable.

While he tasted the drink, the barista had already downed the rest of the coffee that he didn’t drink.

“You can come here for a privilege to choose what to put in your drink, Soobin,” Beomgyu told him later on, punctuating it with a playful wink. “Make it our little secret though.”

So he did just that. He came almost every day, just to find Beomgyu tending to his little cafe. He feigned interest in random books while his intention was mainly just to see the variety of pastel coloured warm clothing Beomgyu always had on.

The baby blue hoodie on Wednesday. A cute yellow overalls on Thursday. A pink beanie with a pair of cat ears jutting out from the top on Friday.

His clothing choices were adorable, despite his strong preference in only drinking his coffee black. Or his persistence to call other kinds of latte and frappuccino as fake coffee. They clashed in the oxymoron that was Choi Beomgyu. 

It almost came as a surprise too, the invitation. 

“Are you coming to the party at Kevin sunbaenim’s place this Sunday? It’d be a good way to readjust, reminding those seniors that you’re one of them,” he asked on Friday, the day where Soobin was too distracted by a pair of cat ears jutting out of Beomgyu’s pastel beanie. How the fake tiny ears move with every shake and tilt of his head.

“Sure?”

“Great! Finally we can see you without all these nerdy books in the background.”

Beomgyu threw a book on top of the table, snapping Soobin’s focus back at him as well as some other students in this particular corner of the library, glaring at them because apparently they had to be quiet. The barista didn’t pay them any mind, already waltzing back onto his working space after the short sessions he spared to bother the elder with every visit.

As he was left alone, it just dawned on him that he had agreed to be somewhere he hadn’t intended to be in for the weekend, especially knowing that more people who knew him from freshman year would be present.

But Beomgyu managed to distract him with a cat ears beanie, maybe he would make the party fun, too.

So imagine his surprise when he saw the male at the first party he was invited to in his sophomore year, walking inside just to see the sight of Beomgyu perched comfortably on a sofa. Tight leather pants with chains, black painted nails. The whole outfit that made him question if he had a twin brother. 

He didn’t get to ask, as someone else already approached him before he mustered enough courage to do it.

The flurry of pastel pink colour that made a contrast with the dark ambience of the room, welcomed by a familiar warm smile from Beomgyu. Before long, there were tangled legs - leather brushing against bare smooth skin, and then hushed whispers between alcohol tinted lips, followed by a kiss. 

From where Soobin’s standing, he could see the other person. His pink hair ruffled up under Beomgyu’s venturing hands while their lips were locked in a kiss. They did it like they’ve been doing it forever. In the middle of the house with people yelling and loud mainstream music booming from the speakers, they seemed to be lost in their own world. Lips locking so tenderly, that Soobin couldn’t help but stare, feeling something indescribable stirring inside him. 

Soobin only realized after what felt like too long that he had been frozen in the middle of the room, eyes fixed at the couple. He tore his gaze, shifting it up, only to catch a pair of foxy eyes staring right at him. The intimidation laid inside the pink hair’s sharp gaze almost made him drop his solo cup, but no. He stayed stunned there, rendered immobile, while the pair of plush lips brushed fleetingly across Beomgyu's soft, parted lips.

That was until he registered the fact that they had broken the kiss, and the plush lips were curled into a smug, kitten-like smirk. He was caught. And that guy didn’t mind that someone was watching them, basking in the way Soobin was fascinated by the sight. 

“So, I ran away,” he said after telling the rendition of his embarrassing night to the only friends he made from his new batch. 

Not like they had any choice about it, since Kang Taehyun was assigned as his new roommate the moment he registered back for a dorm in the campus’ area, and Huening Kai felt responsible after seeing him walk into the department building with a gloomy lost puppy air around him today – his words.

The two were staring at him a little too long for his liking, making him fidget where he was sitting on the floor of the lounge. 

It was a quiet area, since freshmen were not allowed in at this hour and the older students already knew where to hang out between classes. Soobin just didn’t know that the first time he would be granted the privilege to be inside the lounge was because of an innocent question he asked his roommate earlier today

(“Hey, do you know Choi Beomgyu?”

“I might.”

“Is he dating someone?”)

and instead of an answer, he had watched the way Taehyun’s eyes grew comically huge, as if he had said something forbidden.

“I can’t believe I forgot to show Soobin hyung the powerpoint slides!” Kai groaned, slapping a hand over his own face.

“See? This is what happens when I let you go alone,” Taehyun hissed.

“In my defense, I thought I could handle the Choi Soobin, but I got too nervous.”

Soobin never really minded when the two started bickering around him; already learned to tune out for the time being and gaze into a distance. But this time, he had to interrupt.

“Me? _The_ Choi Soobin?”

Taehyun stared at him. “Hyung, you know that the students of our all-boys high school mainly got accepted into this uni, right?”

“Yes.”

“You had a reputation back then. A handsome senior everyone’s crushing on from a far, but never approach.”

He stared blankly at his roommate, trying to register the new information and failing miserably. There was no way people looked at him in that way during high school, especially when he was an outcast who just barely survived through high school with part time jobs on the sides. But he didn’t care about this part. Not yet.

Not when Taehyun had managed to open the powerpoint file he was looking on, and now his laptop screen was filled with a picture of Beomgyu and the pink haired male he saw from the party. 

“Welcome to the Defense Against the Choi Couple training, in short, DACC,” Kai said with a proud smile on his lips as the slideshow started, which was responded to by an embarrassed groan by his friend. “Firstly, let’s start with the introduction.”

He started by explaining how the two had been dating since the last year of high school, but was keeping it low-key for a while until Beomgyu entered uni too, and they became the hottest couple on the campus. The famous pair of a sophomore and a freshman last year. They were famous for being good looking, but also for a whole different reason (“which will be explained in the fifth slide,” Taehyun added.)

The next slide showed a picture of Beomgyu in front of his little library café. He was making a peace sign when the picture was taken, a bright smile on his face. Soobin unconsciously smiled in response to the adorable photo, only to have Taehyun snapping his fingers in front of his face and bringing him back into focus. 

“Choi Beomgyu, 20, faculty of digital arts, photography club’s sole member. He manages the library café most of the time, so the café only opens when he’s not in class. But you already know these,” Taehyun said, staring straight at Soobin in the middle of his explanation that it made the elder jump slightly on his seat. “Because this dumbass left you there on your first day back.”

“You’re saying this like Beomgyu hyung is a threat,” Kai chimed in, unshaken by the accusation.”

“I’m just saying that he is dangerously attractive.”

“He is,” Soobin mumbled.

Kai frantically switched to the next slide just as Taehyun’s mouth fell in disbelief. The excitement in his voice came back as he gestured to the screen which was showing the familiar pink haired male he saw back at the party. The person whose gaze still made Soobinfelt too warm under the collar of his shirt.

“This is Choi Yeonjun, 21, faculty of performance arts, and the head of the dance club. She was pretty low-key during freshman year, I heard, and then Beomgyu showed up and they started kissing in every corner of the campus and suddenly, pink hair!”

That made sense. He knew a Choi Yeonjun in high school; an overachiever who always took the number one spot during tests. As the art and humanities department was a small department with only one building with several floors, Yeonjun must have been pretty quiet, considering Soobin hadn’t heard that much about him during freshman year.

But that was the least of his concern.

“Hold on, she?” he questioned, feeling squeamish at the possibility of misgendering someone. It was dark at the party, but even that couldn’t be an excuse.

“Oh right, you weren’t there when they made that statement.”

(The statement:

It was eternalized in a video uploaded to the department’s blog. An ‘incident’ in the department’s annual Christmas party where ChoiYeonjun – voted as A&H’s It Boy – climbed up onto the auditorium’s stage and took off his coat to display the dark green dress he wore underneath. The pair of black stockings hugging his long legs completed the look.

Soobin thought he looked pretty under the sparkly stage light, but he shone even brighter when he spoke firmly into the mic.

“My name is Choi Yeonjun, and whatever I’m wearing to class from now on, you do not put a label on me.”)

“Yeah, so that’s the hottest student in our department. She hates being gendered, so you don’t call her stuff like dude or bro, or even hyung,” Kai explained some more after the interruption of the video, then added with a tiny smug smile on his lips. “She lets me call her noona, though. Maybe she will let you do that too when you get close enough.”

“Why,” Taehyun deadpanned.

“Because I’m one of those people privileged to talk to him?”

“No, I don’t care about that part, but why does Soobin hyung want to be close to Yeonjun sunbae?” 

“Because Soobin hyung likes her boyfriend?”

“Yah, Soobin hyung is here, listening to you guys talking about him like he’s not in the room,” he cuts in, mostly because of what Kai said. He felt his ears burn at the conclusion taken by the younger. The only thing he did was calling Beomgyu attractive, and wondering if he was taken. Not like he was going to make a move on him.

The duo’s powerpoint presentation had familiarized him with the couple, but it left him with one more question that he did not voice to the two.

If Beomgyu was taken, why would he do this?

(This being: 

the ending of the party where Soobin got cornered near the door by a certain boy who hadn’t left his mind ever since the first time they met.

“You were staring,” Beomgyu said, pressing up to him in a way that was too close to be comfortable, yet too far to touch. “Did you see something that you liked? 

“What do you mean by this something?” Soobin asked, distracted by the way Beomgyu’s tongue poked out of his lips, swiping across the trace of pink lip gloss stain on his lips. Probably from when he was being kissed.

When his gaze was back to staring at his eyes, he found a playful glint swimming in the pair.

“Something that could've very well been…” he trailed off, arm coiling around Soobin’s waist. He didn’t question it at first, until he felt fingers slipping into the back pocket of his jeans, and he was holding his breath as he felt a steady warm of Beomgyu’s breathing so close to his jaw. Too close. “ _Us._ ”

He shut his eyes to try calming down his heart rate, and then the intimidation was gone. The other had pulled away, smiling at him rather innocently as he turned around to leave. There was suddenly too much oxygen surging into his lungs as he remembered how to breathe again. He missed the suffocating sensation of being so close to the prettiest boy he’s ever seen.)

Taehyun conveniently answered the question when he went to the fifth slide.

“This brings us to the main point on why we absolutely do not show attraction towards either, or both of them,” he started, pointing at the row of ‘quotes’ that started filling the screen, followed by a tacky red line of _DO NOT ATTEMPT!!!_ blinking at the bottom of the slide, in a distracting animation setting.

> _Good kissers, even better heartbreakers – Lee * *_
> 
> _If you ever think that they genuinely have a crush on you, boy do I have bad news for you -- Park * *_
> 
> _Fell in love with one, and then two, and got ghosted. 10/10 would not recommend. – Choi * *_
> 
> _They will make you swoon and then collect your heart in a jar. It’s going to be your best and worst heartbreak. – * * * *_

“The last one was from you, wasn’t it?” Soobin snapped his gaze up to stare at Kai, who burst out laughing right away. 

“We were low on reviews. Three didn’t seem like a good number,” he shrugged, not looking guilty about his fake ‘review’ at all. 

Taehyun banged his hand on top of the table, collecting the two’s attention again into the matter, since he seemed to be the only one who took it seriously. 

“This is nothing to laugh about! There is this rumour that they have fun by dating other people, but they pick who to date,” he said, gathering the two’s full attention again. 

This time, he did pique Soobin’s curiosity. His lips were pressed together into a thin line, dimples showing on either side of his lips before he voiced his question. 

“How does that work, exactly?”

“They agreed on a target, then they got all hung up on them. The person would feel like they were being chased by the two, before getting dropped once they succeeded, because obviously, they only have their eyes set on each other. Self-proclaimed _true love_ s and all,” Taehyun explained, rolling his eyes as he probably assessed once more on how stupid the whole scheme was. 

Kai nodded firmly from his side. “It’s all about the chase.”

“And teaching a lesson. That’s why they usually target the people who show interest towards one of them. It’s a way to show that no matter what happens, you can’t steal them from each other.”

“Some people still think they stood a chance, though, only to have their heart and pride broken. How awful, right?” 

“Yet you’re still friends with them.”

“I don’t judge my friend’s bad choices and hobbies. Besides, I’m friends with like, 75% of the department and the faculty staff. It will help me gain votes for election later on.”

As usual, they seemed to carry on with their own conversation, while Soobin’s mind went elsewhere, trying to piece up the information he learned today about the third rule in the A&H department and connect it with what happened the night before. 

  1. Choi Beomgyu is dating someone
  2. That someone caught him staring while they were making out
  3. He got Beomgyu’s phone number, given to him in the flirtiest way.



Soobin wouldn’t consider himself a genius, but he suspected where this was going, now that he was under the couple’s radar. It might be a fun experience, as long as Soobin did not accidentally invest his heart. 

At the end of the day, Choi Beomgyu was still too attractive for his own good in both pastel and goth, and Soobin couldn’t do anything about it because he’s in a relationship with the other famous Choi who rocked pink hair and wore skirts to classes. 

There was no way someone like them would even look his way without a possible hidden motive.

**━━━━━━━☆☆━━━━━━━**

  
  


Beomgyu had no excuse for his bad decisions, but this time, he would say that it was caused by his mortal enemy: **_Boredom_ ** **.**

A college student usually had several points in their wishlist before entering the university of their choice, and some of them probably never obtained any of them even after finishing their studies. Among those lists, there are four common ones you can find in every wish list.

> Popularity √
> 
> ~~(that stemmed from being an infamous heartbreaker)~~
> 
> Extra income √
> 
> ~~(just because he’s privileged enough to have his boyfriend built an actual café for him)~~
> 
> Good grades √
> 
> ~~(perks of being the teacher’s pet during the day)~~
> 
> A loving significant other √

He completed his wishlist at the beginning of his second year, and suddenly everything felt mundane. So-called friends sucking up to you just because you had the power to make them _known_ , your dream part time job didn’t feel so dreamy anymore, you’d obtained all the prof’s trust that they’re giving you good scores unconditionally.

Even this party, despite his excitement, felt just like the past eighteen ones he attended. The same old tasteless upbeat songs, the same faces acting like they were friends with him, the same cheap alcohol that didn’t worth the cash he dropped. 

“Aren’t you banned from these parties?” 

He looked up from where he was sitting, all in his lonesome while the others were probably getting shitfaced drunk or making out in the bedrooms. As he caught the sight of Heejin looking down at him with disapproval all over her face, the first smile of the night made it to his face.Finally someone who could hold interesting conversations.

“Are you supposed to be here when you’re running for prez?”

“How else am I going to get you guys’ votes if I don’t mingle? Move,” she snorted, nudging Beomgyu’s legs as she squeezed herself onto a vacant spot on the sofa. “You two breaking Eunjin’s heart was almost the last strike. She was still tweeting about it up till last month.”

“We already made it clear from the beginning and she was cool about it. Why is it my fault that she’s actually in love with my boyfriend?” 

Heejin gave him a look before she let out the biggest sigh. “I’m just saying that the next time you’re trying to break someone’s heart, it might be the end of you two.”

“The end of our popularity?” he scoffed.

“That’s one. But how many hearts can you break without breaking your own?”

That was new. 

It’s not like he wasn’t aware of how shitty their hobby was – dating someone else while being in a relationship, without intending to commit to the other person? Even their closest friends judged them for this. The sole reason they still did it was to feed Beomgyu’s urges for excitement and Yeonjun’s love for being adored. This made them happy.

The possibility of them being the broken one just never occurred to him. The fear settled only for a split moment, before Beomgyu broke into a grin. 

“That would never happen. Are you worried about us?” 

“Not a chance. I’m just telling you so you would stop hitting on my prospect girlfriends,” she said, rolling her eyes. As she lifted a small bottle in her hand, the grin made it back to her face. “Also cause you bring the best liquors and I have to steal it.”

Beomgyu gaped as she got up from the sofa and disappeared through the loud music of the room, leaving him in all his lonesomeness again, except with not even a single drop of good liquor. The best he had is the cold piss beer Heejin left on the table, which he downed in a single shot. 

And the presence of a certain pink hair who came as his salvation for the night.

“You’re too tense,” he said, taking his space on Beomgyu’s lap like the whole sofa wasn’t unoccupied. It’s the adorable thing that made his heart swell, the way Yeonjun liked to show off their relationship with a lot of public displays of affection while he was the more reserved one.

Beomgyu might be the louder one between the two, but Yeonjun loved in a loud way.

“Am not. First week back and my mind is still at the ski resort.”

“You know what you need?” 

Beomgyu arched a brow. “Drinks?”

“Nope. A fucking mindblowing kiss from yours truly.”

Choi Yeonjun always made his words come true, and this was one of his favourites. He did bluff a lot, but when it came to kissing, even his bluffing didn’t come close to how amazing it felt to have the pair of plush lips kissing you. 

Their lips were wet with the taste of beer and their clothes stink from their friends’ smokes, but the moment Beomgyu had Yeonjun’s lips on top of his, everything else ceased to exist. There was only the taste of Yeonjun’s lips that were moving gently, yet firmly over his lips, the feeling of his bare thighs under his fingers, until they were stopped by an intruding presence of a leather band circling one of Yeonjun’s thighs.

Hot pants and thigh strap. _Fuck_.

“Fuck, indeed,” Yeonjun’s voice broke through the clouds in his mind, and only then did he realize that he had said it aloud. A trace of smirk could be tasted from where their lips still brushed against each other. A fleetingly sweet touch.

Beomgyu was drunk on it. This really made up for all the piss beer he had to drink tonight.

They kissed some more, until Yeonjun started speaking again, breaking off all contacts when he sat up straight on his lap. A hand on Beomgyu’s chest. “Someone has been watching us kiss.”

It wasn’t new that someone would be interested in the show Yeonjun liked to put, and it was definitely not new either, that Yeonjun would glow with pride every time it happened. 

_Someone finding you attractive is one thing. Someone finding you attractive when you’re already taken? That’s fucking it._ – as he would say.

“Who is it? Good or bad kind of watching?”

“No idea, but he’s totally in love with me,” Yeonjun said, taking a hold of Beomgyu’s chin before tilting his head to make him look towards a certain direction. “Black hair, tall, cute lips.Would look better with bleached hair, for sure.”

From this angle, Beomgyu caught the view of the rows of discarded solo cups and the speakers he wanted to destroy. And then he saw the mentioned guy. The very familiar face that became his only consolation during boring hours at the library. The new sophomore who always brought a fresh intake of breath into his dull library corner.

“What the hell, that’s Choi Soobin,” he broke into laughter. 

“That’s him? Choi Soobin from high school?"

“Well, that’s him. And I met him last time at the library, so it was me he’s staring at. Sorry to burst your little bubble,” Beomgyu said with a grin, tearing his gaze away to have his eyes back on his boyfriend just as Soobin glanced their way. 

“He looked right into my eyes,” he scoffed. “Give me a yes and I’ll get him to kiss me by the end of the night.”

Yes. This is normal.

And yes. His Yeonjun was very much in love with him, too.

It was just the nature of their relationship. All the little flirting sessions and explorations and the absolute trusts that they would come back to each other’s hand at the end of the day. One that Heejin warned him to bite him back in the ass just minutes ago.

Before Yeonjun could brew up more ideas in his head on how to get the cute tall boy to kiss him, he was interrupted by his own yelp as the leather strap snapped against his skin. The skin bloomed red around the edge, probably still stung as Yeonjun glared at his boyfriend who just smiled innocently.

“You’re the one who said no more flirting game, so I guess you’re going to be stuck with only me for a while.”

Yeonjun cursed at him as he removed himself from his lap. “I hate you. You can go home to your cold lonely bed tonight.”

Those empty threats and spiteful words never became a problem for them to throw around. They had known each other for too long that they had lost their foul meanings somewhere along the road. So it was a given that Beomgyu still found waking up buried deep under Yeonjun’s cover the next morning, vaguely recalling how he had been so tired to drag himself back to the campus dorm. 

Waking up in Yeonjun’s bed was a personal favourite of his, despite him always firmly refusing the elder’s offer to just move in together. 

But how could he miss out on these? The warmth enveloping him from the very first second he opened his eyes to the sun filtering through the window, and the feeling of Yeonjun’s arms wrapping around him when he tried to get up, keeping him back in the bed.

“You don’t have a morning class,” came the voice muffled by his shirt, as Yeonjun’s face was buried into his shirt, blocking any source of lights from his nocturnal eyes.

“But you do. Get your ass up!”

His voice was deep, yet loud enough in the comfortable silence of the morning. This being a morning routine for them throughout the last semester break, it was not surprising to see Yeonjun slowly dozing off again despite his loudness. His pink hair jutted out everywhere in disarray.

Beomgyu’s favourite version of Choi Yeonjun. The version of him where he wasn’t trying so hard to look perfect; the vulnerable, exposed side of Yeonjun that was only reserved to his boyfriend to see.

If anyone told him that this is where he would be after three years of knowing the elder, he would laugh at their face.

Transferring to that all-boys high school was his parents’ last resort of keeping him at bay. Apparently the best idea of taking care of a son who had no respect for you was to put him in schools with dormitories and curfews. As if being in that kind of school would somehow tranquilize him and suppress his teenage angst phase and he would graduate as a responsible adult. Unlike their lost case with his brother.

But he was not his brother, and this decision only broke him further.

The first time he met Choi Yeonjun, he was being shoved down face first onto the school hallways’ dirty floor. There were some classmates looking at them. At _him._ Probably thinking that the new student was a freak for going feral without any provocation.

The not-provocation being whispered comments and sneers of ‘hey, I heard your brother is in jail’ or ‘I wonder what everyone would say if they know’ that haunted him during days and nights of his first week at the new school.

It was the stress that made him snap, fingers gripping tightly on a wooden bat as he marched through the corridors until he was stopped by the senior he had never seen before.

“Calm the fuck down. You want me to call security on you?” Yeonjun stayed calm even as he had used his whole strength to keep the struggling first year down. 

“How am I the freak when they hid my backpack on my first day and laughed like some high school clique when I walked around looking for it, which they were. Or when they try to blackmail me into being their little lackeys just because they know that… that my brother is a criminal,” he held his sob as he said the last part, didn’t even care anymore if anyone else heard. 

But he felt Yeonjun’s hold loosening on him, and he almost scored a good punch on his pretty face, only to have his hand grabbed as the elder easily pulled him up and dragged him to an empty classroom. 

“The school doesn’t give a fuck when someone’s bullied. That’s true,” Yeonjun said once they were alone, keeping his cool with his arms crossed across his chest while Beomgyu was still panting from his breakdown, hands gripping his useless bat. “But they won’t give a fuck either if you taught them a lesson, only in a more low-key way.”

That made Beomgyu blink slowly, not expecting an encouragement from the senior who was now smirking at him. 

He was still called to the principal’s room the next day, being questioned about some wreckage of school property and personal belongings of some students who were glaring at him from the corner of the office.

But they had no proof, as Beomgyu didn’t end up using his bat.

Not on them, anyway. Just their lockers and their precious gaming devices.

Payback’s a bitch.

Instead of the bat, he was later known as the guy who brought his guitar everywhere and played songs by requests. Just like that, Yeonjun had saved his high school reputation, turning him into a possible feral freak into a gentle first year who played guitar prettily. 

The senior also didn’t pay much attention to him anymore now that he wasn’t a source of problem. Choi Yeonjun was a famous name in the school, always in the spotlight of everyone’s attention, just as he deserved with how perfect he was as a person. 

The dance club’s captain who brought his team to busking sessions in Hongdae that hit a lot of views on Youtube. The praised student council disciplinary officer who was liked by all the teachers. The handsome and friendly senior who wouldn’t mind being friends with everyone.

Even as Beomgyu followed him around with admiration swimming in his eyes, he was just one of those everyone elses.

The next time Yeonjun actually _looked_ at him was when he accidentally walked in to his little secret. 

It was long after the last period and everyone was either back in the dormitory or attending some club activities. Beomgyu liked visiting the dance club room just to see if the senior had come up with a new dance routine on his own. 

That day, he was welcomed by the sight of Yeonjun dancing in a skirt for the first time. It was contemporary, slow and elegant gestures under the white lights of the dance room and the white silk of the skirt flew around his waist oh so softly. A gentle ripple in a calm river. A storm in Beomgyu’s sea.

It was not his fault, that he stayed stunned by the door for a while, even after the music stopped and Yeonjun stopped his movement. His hand brushing over his face to catch a stray droplet of sweat, hissing when he messed up with whatever product that made his plush lips tinted pink.

He only noticed Beomgyu’s presence when he moved closer towards the mirror to fix the mess. The yelp made the younger jump on his spot too, eyes wide as they locked with Yeonjun’s own. The loudest sound that followed was a tube of lip tint falling down onto the floor in his surprise.

Being the intruding presence in Yeonjun’s life, Beomgyu didn’t leave. His footsteps were loud in the vacant room when he walked closer, picked the tube. Yeonjun was not breathing when he cupped his chin and applied more of the glossy liquid onto Yeonjun’s lips to finish the job. They glittered under the light in all their pink glory. 

“You don’t think this is weird?” the elder laughed dryly once he snapped out of his surprise, turning his head away from Beomgyu’s fingers that were holding his chin delicately.

“Is it weird to be beautiful?”

Yeonjun blinked up at him. Both his lips and eyes glistened under the glaring lights of the room. 

(It wasn’t until later on that Yeonjun actually _looked_ at him. With the very same lip gloss that tasted sweet against Beomgyu’s lips, as Yeonjun kissed him for the first time. His eyes blinking in daze as he was the one cradling the younger’s face this time. 

“Do you still think I’m beautiful?” he asked, words caressing Beomgyu’s lips.

The question haunted him in his dreams for weeks later on, making his blood pound in his ears because he was kissed again right after that and he didn’t get to tell Yeonjun that he thought the elder was the most beautiful person he had ever seen.

He didn’t think that he’d be granted all the time in the world to tell him that every single day in the future.)

The last time he saw Yeonjun in high school, it was during the prom night. The night everyone was allowed to bring guests from outside the school. It was also the first time Yeonjun wore a dress in public, and no one noticed him under the dim light of the prom. No one except Beomgyu, who came over to him at the refreshment table and asked for his hand in a dance.

A last dance.

Beomgyu was pulled into a dance. A kiss. Then a promise.

“If you stop calling me hyung, you can start calling yourself my boyfriend.”

“Oh?”

“And you can start calling me every day too, even once I get out of his shithole.”

“Are you asking me out?” Beomgyu bit his lip, nervous. The closeness between their bodies squeezed among others in the dance floor as well as the velvety dress under his fingers were unusual. But not unpleasant. He felt like he could do this forever as long as Yeonjun looked at him like this. Glitter in his eyes and his lips.

“No. I’m asking you if you’re _in_ , Gyu. Give me a yes and you’ll have all of me.”

(On the first day of the new term, his classmates were wondering if Beomgyu brought his girlfriend with him. Everyone cornered him in the class, being nosy as always like they had the right to with how he kept everyone at arm length.

He did confirm that yes, that was his lover.

His girlfriend. His boyfriend.

A path to being his everything.)

  
  


“Fuck. I can’t go back to sleep, why are you thinking so loudly?” Yeonjun finally pried himself away from the tight hold he purchased around the younger. He sat up on the bed, hair still messy and sweatpants low on his hips, while his shirt was discarded somewhere else during the night. 

Leave it up to Yeonjun to start stripping during his sleep even in cold weather.

“Just thinking about you.Us.”

That brought a smile on Yeonjun’s lips. His cheek mushed against Beomgyu’s shoulder as he leaned against the younger. “And I thought you’d be thinking of your new favourite hyung.”

“Who?”

“Bunny boy.”

Beomgyu snorted, thinking of the shy smile and scent of coffee in the library corner. He did tell the latter that the guy had been visiting him every day in the library. And really, it was not that rare for someone to randomly start crushing on either one of them. They always ended up being a source of laugh over dinner dates, or possible victims of their little games.

What’s rare was him cornering the person at one of the parties, or him being the first one who gave his number. Especially not when there was no agreement between the two about the person being a prospect target yet.

“Are you jealous?” he teased, earning a bite on his shoulder that made him hiss. 

“Me, jealous of Choi Soobin? Nonsense,” Yeonjun scoffed, though there was no masking the hint of possessiveness in the grip around his waist. Or the way his fingers were curled around a handful of his shirt.

Perhaps one of these days, Yeonjun would take back his declaration of stopping their little pastime activity. Until then, the unread text from an unknown number on Beomgyu’s phone would have to stay unread

**━━━━━━━☆☆━━━━━━━**

For Yeonjun, that kiss was the beginning of a new chapter.

One second, he was kissing his boyfriend in the middle of a loud and stinky party, with their friends who were already used to ignoring them when they were making out. The next second, he found his eyes locked with a familiar stranger. All while he was still being kissed by his beautiful boyfriend who looked at him like he was the only one present in the room. 

_How adorable_. He remembered thinking that to himself when the guy scurried out of sight the moment he smirked at him. 

‘Adorable’ was forgotten instantly when he saw the very same guy the next day. With his head still pounding from lack of sleep, and his expectation instantly deflated in his chest at the announcement crashing down onto his back, ruining his day that was perfectly started for once.

“No wait, you told me that I was the only one running for this position, that the other people were underqualified?” he asked urgently, not even trying to hide the subtle panic rising to his voice. 

He wore this outfit. The white button up shirt and a pair of his proper jeans that screamed _boring!_ just to make a good impression for the marketing staff that was supposed to announce his name as the new model for the department’s promotion section. He looked boring for a day, only to be told that he was not the chosen one anymore. 

It’s difficult, for _The Chosen One_ , to not be chosen for once.

“I’m sorry,” Jaehwan said, as the intern student who worked there and used his connection to make sure Yeonjun got the extra consideration. “There was a late submission and then they instantly picked him, saying that he would look better on the advertisement boards.”

“They think he looks better than me?” he deadpanned.

“Not like that! More like… more presentable?”

“Art is about freedom. _I_ look like the embodiment of art,” he hissed, glaring at Soobin from a corner of his eyes. He caught the pair of doe eyes at him, which widened as soon as their eyes locked, reminding him of what happened just the night before.

“We got humanities in our department too…”

“And? He’s a teacher in training, not a model,” Yeonjun sighed in exasperation, but Jaehwan actually looked so guilty that he didn’t have the heart to be annoyed anymore. At least not at him. “It’s whatever. Your loss.”

It was childish, to be so worked up over being the face put up across the department’s website or possibly promotional banners on advertisement. Not like he was aiming to be a model either. It’s just the competitive fire inside him that twisted his guts at the thought of not being the number one.

The thing that would cause his downfall one of these days.

As he left the place, he tried not to think about how the guy who just stole his job opportunity from right under his nose was the same guy who had been eyeing his boyfriend. It was especially hard as the guy followed him. His long legs caught up to him easily before he could turn around the corner of the corridor.

“I’m sorry, I really didn’t know that you were already picked,” Soobin said, looking genuinely apologetic. Like he actually felt bad. “If you really need the job, I can give it up. I don’t really—“

Choi Soobin. The Choi Soobin had the audacity to talk to him. Three years of being in the same high school and not once did he attempt to talk to Yeonjun, and he picked _now._

“I don’t need your pity,” Yeonjun spat, making the latter stop on his track. 

“Ah, I’m sorry. Did I offend you?” he grimaced, more lines of guilt appeared on his face.

“Not really, no. I don’t really blame them for thinking that you’d make a perfect model, seeing that they need more nerdy language students to fill the quota,” he said before he could question himself on why he felt the need to make this guy feel better about stealing his job. He just knew that he didn’t like seeing him upset. “Hold this.”

Soobin blinked when Yeonjun shoved his jacket into his hands. 

He pulled a hair tie from around his wrist, using it to tie the back of his pink hair that had grown a little longer past the collar of his shirt. It looked cool, but distracting when it started tickling the sensitive spot on his neck.

Speaking of sensitive. He was sensitive to being stared as well, and without even looking where Soobin’s eyes were, he could feel his gaze lingering on the sliver of skin exposed above the waistband of his jeans as he lifted his hands. 

He didn’t know much about Choi Soobin, but Yeonjun knew attraction when he saw it. 

“I’ll see you around, Soobin,” he said, lips curling into a knowing smile as he took his jacket back from the latter. The way Soobin’s ears were tinted red just added into the satisfaction blooming in his chest. 

It grew even more, as he felt Soobin’s eyes following him when he walked away.

Choi Yeonjun loved a lot of things. Art, dancing, food, fashion, and Beomgyu were just the few of them, but most of all, he loved the feeling of being adored. It was also his motivation for starting the flirting game alongside his boyfriend, watching just how much he could push until someone would break and started liking him back. Or give in to the urge to kiss him. 

An idea started to form in his head as he walked away from the corridor, and he knew early on that he was going to regret it in the end. Just like any other time. 

And just like any other time, he was going for it.

“They didn’t pick me as the model,” he told Beomgyu as soon as he found the guy. 

His pastel boyfriend was buying coffee from a vending machine at the first floor’s lobby (which is ironic seeing how he could make it himself), and he crept up behind him, hugging him from behind just to tuck his hands into the front pocket of his orange hoodie. 

It was an instant explosion of comfort as Beomgyu leaned into his hold and turned his head to press a kiss to his forehead. 

“They’re a bunch of tasteless idiots.”

“They picked Choi Soobin.”

Beomgyu was quiet for a moment before he burst into laughter, earning him a squeeze around the waist that made him yelp. “I’m sorry! It’s just funny that they jumped to the different end of the spectrum.”

“Right? They might as well tell me that it was because of my hair or the way I dress up that they didn’t pick me to represent the department.”

Another thing he absolutely loved about his boyfriend was that he never let a thought – no matter how playful it was – to stay there with a potential to bloom into another source of Yeonjun’s overthinking. He felt it in the way Beomgyu pet his hair and bumped his head gently against his own. His body started radiating more comforting warmth as if that was possible for a human to control.

“You know that there’s nothing wrong with the way you dress or style your hair, right? You’re perfect, and half the school wants to be you.”

“That. Or they want me.”

“That too, but there’s only one of you. And this one is all mine.”

Yeonjun broke into a grin. The first genuine one since he left the marketing office. He pressed his smile onto Beomgyu’s neck before he pulled away, letting the younger turn around to face him with the cup of coffee cooling down in his hand. Beomgyu was smiling so prettily, and Yeonjun _knew_ that this was the only thing he needed to make his days better.

==

But he also knew that there was something else he could do to get rid of the competitive fire licking inside his chest. It felt like an itch that he couldn’t scratch. The urge that came back from experiencing loss after a while.

The thought that he knew would end up in either tears or a slap on his cheek. Or both. 

There were some lines he couldn’t cross, and he almost let it snap the moment he let Eunjin fall for him just a few months back, letting her think that it could be something. That there was a chance of it just being the two of them, with no Beomgyu in the picture.

For that, she deserved the heartbreak, and he deserved the public humiliation in the form of a slap across his face in the middle of a lounge full of people.

==

It was not until later in the day that he voiced the thought. Beomgyu was going to remove himself from the bed, to finally go back to his gloomy dormitory room that couldn’t compare to Yeonjun’s apartment for the first time that week. He held him back with his fingers tugging on the hem of his hoodie. 

“Hey, Gyu.”

“Hm?”

“What do you think about doing another round of the game?”

_The game_. He didn’t even need to mention the name or the mechanism of the game again as they had been over this too often for his own liking.

“You’re saying this because you have someone you want to kiss or ruin,” Beomgyu scoffed, already familiar with the technicalities. “Who is it this time?”

“Choi Soobin.”

There was a pause. Uncertainty swam across Beomgyu’s solemn eyes for a split second before it’s replaced by a twinkle. “We both know that he’s attracted to me. Wouldn’t it end too quickly?”

“Then I’ll just have to beat you before he could get his way to you.”

Beomgyu stared at him for a second too long, before his lips curled into a grin. “If you lost, I’m picking our vacation spot for our next term break, right?”

“Sure, but you’ll never get to that part.”

“One kiss?”

“One kiss.”

The game was already on by the time they confirmed it, and then it was finalized the moment Beomgyu leaned in to press a kiss to his lips, smiling. “We’re going to Daegu in summer, baby.”


	2. round 2: earth, fire, burn

**Round 2**

**━━━━━━━** **earth, fire, burn** **━━━━━━━**

Before their first meeting in the library, there were the Choi Beomgyu and Choi Soobin from high school. 

Who would have thought that he would meet the guy again?

The senior never had a strong presence in high school, but he ended up being where Beomgyu least wanted him to be. Even before he had the privilege to be under Yeonjun's radar, he was greeted by that dimpled smile and awkward demeanour first.

Their actual first meeting was marked with a shitty first day and the first ounce of anger bubbling inside him – at his new classmates, his brother, his parents. At the world.

And then there was a pair of footsteps coming closer, too dull to notice that Beomgyu was on the verge of breaking down. The teary glare he gave at the senior did not deter the resolution of the person either, as the tall guy kept walking towards him. Until a bag was dropped on the floor before him.

"Isn’t this yours?" he said, offering a smile that showed a pair of dimples near the corners of his lips. “I see that you’re having a rough day.”

First impression: Choi Soobin could not read the fucking room.

"Rough first of many more days," he checked his bag, cringing as he felt the dampness. The brand new books he got for his new classes were all wet. The pages stuck together in a lump. He gave up trying to save it and directed his anger towards the senior instead. "Why do you care? You're just the same as everyone else."

"Aren't we all?"

There was a comfort behind that. No comforting words of  _ everything is going to be okay _ or mindless advice like telling him to report those classmates to the school. High school is a foul place, and he could see that this person had a hidden pain behind the friendly demeanour he had as a cover.

_ Is your pain the same pain as mine? He _ wanted to ask, yet he ended up throwing his gaze away, stuffing his ruined books into his bag and closed himself up from the warm presence. 

Because Soobin was a liar. He was different from everyone else.

He didn’t tell Beomgyu how he found the bag in the first place, leaving him to wonder why Soobin walked around with a dirty uniform and a leaf on his hair, until way later when a classmate mentioned seeing the tacit senior climbing a tree at the school’s backyard.

It could also be seen from how Beomgyu found a stack of books on his desk the very next day, the exact same books ruined just the day before. There was no note or anything, but they were a secondhand with a lot of scribbles and drawing that reeked of a certain figure. 

Beomgyu's ego was too big for him to find his way to the senior and thank him. 

This was not the way he was hoping to see Choi Soobin again, someone who might as well had saved his life in high school along with Yeonjun. They never talked anymore after that first day, but he couldn't lie and say he had never thought about kissing those plush lips. Those days he spotted Soobin at the corridors in high school, too far out of reach, blending into the shadow where he was the most comfortable in.

If Yeonjun was the glaring light that everyone including Beomgyu was drawn into, Soobin was a shadow.

This time, he could end up drawing Soobin out of the shadow, into the light that might burn him down.

==

Beomgyu was always so quick when it came to this game. The flirting game, as they would call it.

It started when Beomgyu started to get invited to these college parties for being the freshman boyfriend of one of the coolest students from the art department. What started off as quiet making out sessions turned into curious eyes watching the variety of people – all the seniors that reminded him of how different it was from high school.

The only thing that stayed remotely the same was the fact that they were still very much interested in  _ his  _ Yeonjun.

The attempts of reassuring him didn’t work, as it never bloomed in the first place. They turned into challenges instead. The thing Yeonjun was best at. He had accustomed to speak in Yeonjun’s language that it was enough to be the start of something.

(The hushed whispers:

“He’s been staring at you for the past fifteen minutes.”

“Aw, is baby bear jealous?”

“Nope, he’s only looking for someone to bring home anyway.”

“Are you saying that you can switch his interest towards you if you tried?”

“Wanna bet?”)

That first night the challenge started, Beomgyu set the unbreakable record of 10 minutes, ever since he got up to the guy and baited him into dropping the line  _ “it’s too noisy here, do you wanna go somewhere else?” _ in which he only smiled at before turning around to go back to his boyfriend and kissed him on the mouth. 

Beomgyu was always quick in getting the job done, keeping himself as detached as possible while accomplishing the little target they set ( _ invitation, a date, a kiss, get this person to ask you out, get that person to buy dinner for you _ ) and win the challenge. They always picked someone who showed mild interest in one of them, so one of them naturally had the upper hand. Especially if it was him, Beomgyu could finish the challenge before Yeonjun could have a chance to make his move.

This challenge for Soobin’s kiss was an anomaly. 

Beomgyu is a chaser. He liked being the one following the other like a lovesick puppy (like Yeonjun’s case back in high school) or making his target flustered under his attention. 

He thought he nailed that latter part on that instance where he gave Soobin his number back at the party, yet he was the one reduced into mumbling, blushing mess under the attention given by the elder.

At first, he blamed it on his daylight attire putting him in a softer mood.

“Just how many of these cute attires do you have, Beomgyu?” Soobin stopped him when they met at the lobby just to play with the long bunny ears flopped out of his maroon beanie. His eyes were fixated at the soft fabric of the hat; thankfully, causing him to miss the way Beomgyu shrunk under the attention, hugging his bag to his chest.

“Uh... a lot? Do you like them?”

“I like…” Soobin trailed off, gaze falling down to lock onto Beomgyu’s that it almost made him run away. “Your cute hats. Nobody else wears things like this,” he smiled, ruffling the portion of Beomgyu’s soft hair that peeked out of his beanie with his fingers..

The huge hand that might as well cover his face as a whole. For a second, he mildly wondered how it felt to hold the hand in his, only to smack his forehead with his own hand at the way he betrayed himself.

He was the chaser. There was no way he’d let himself turn into this mushy version of himself because of this little game.

The next time he crossed path with Soobin again, he was clad in a whole different set of outfit from the ones he wore when he’s posing as a teacher’s pet. His defense was that his personality changed along with his persona. 

Yeonjun had rolled his eyes at his reasoning. “Yeah? How come both versions of you got so madly in love with me, then?” which he ignored, because that was  _ so _ not the point.

When he met Soobin on the way to the library, the male didn’t show any reaction to his change of personas. Perhaps he had used the element of surprise back at the party. Or perhaps the whole persona change never worked because he was still the same Beomgyu under all these attires. The Beomgyu who was rendered speechless when Soobin paid too much attention to him.

Whether it was the beanie or his chain earring, like what he was doing to distract Beomgyu from telling him about the new yakisoba bread available on the cafeteria’s online catalogue, with his fingers touching his dangly earring. 

“Why do you always do this?” Beomgyu finally snapped, sucking in an exasperated breath through his teeth. 

“Do what?”

“Distracting me. Touching my stuff.”

“I didn’t know it made you uncomfortable. I’m sorry—“

“No! I mean, it’s fine. But I thought it was just with the cute hats I wore. I didn’t know you’d pay attention to other stuff as well.”

Soobin finally took a better look at him, scanning him from head to toe. “You do look different today.”

“My boyfriend likes to style me up sometimes,” he quickly made up an excuse, which was not entirely wrong since Yeonjun did pick up his outfit for the day. The leather jacket and the tight pants plus chains combination that restricted his legs room. “Why? Does this look make you want to kiss me or something?”

That made Soobin stop on his track, blinking slowly and staring for a little too long that Beomgyu started to sweat under the collar of this jacket. He needed this persona to stay intact so he wouldn’t run away after saying something like that.

“Actually, you don’t need to change your style for that,” he said, followed by a small laugh as if he didn’t just send Beomgyu’s heart to do a triple backflips with that statement. What was that? Was he saying that he’d want to kiss Beomgyu even when he wasn’t dressing up? Or was it a total rejection?

While his brain was working in full force to figure it out, Soobin had gone into his own wondering. He only caught the last part as Yeonjun was mentioned. “…what’s with you guys and kissing?”

“Huh? What did they say again?”

Soobin gave him a confused look before telling him about how Yeonjun came up to him earlier complaining about the department’s modelling job again and how he got heated up this time as well, only for Yeonjun to boldly say to his face that Soobin  _ wanted to kiss him so bad _ .

The little piece of information made Beomgyu scoff, knowing just what kind of tactic used by his boyfriend to accomplish his mission. The first thing Yeonjun would do was to plant the idea into the target’s head, and then the rest would follow.

Smart. He had totally stolen the first step in the run, but he’d forgotten that Beomgyu already had the upper hand way before the start line was drawn.

“Right, good luck with work today, my group is there!” Soobin said in a hushed voice once they entered the library, pointing at a table where several people were gathering. 

“I thought you’re joining me?” 

“Ah, sorry. It’s a little busy today.”

Right. Soobin might have accompanied him during free hours at his little library café, but there was no way Beomgyu could expect the male to be there for him all the time. He had been too complacent.

And thinking about Yeonjun’s first move in the chess board only ignited his competitive spirit some more that he ended up catching Soobin’s arm before he advanced further towards his friends. His mouth moved faster than his brain.

“Do you want to go on a date with me?”

It was a simple request, and Soobin was just one of the many targets they’d have since the beginning of the game. What didn’t make sense was the way his heart was beating faster with every second passed that Soobin didn’t respond. He was  _ nervous _ .

Choi Beomgyu does not get nervous when flirting. 

Soobin’s case was a real anomaly.

And there was no explanation on the way his heart dropped the moment he spotted Soobin sitting in Yeonjun’s living room the moment he waltzed in with his spare key. 

Three days passed ever since they decided on the bet, and Yeonjun already had Soobin in his place, wearing his pajamas with his homework strewn across the table. 

Yeonjun only got him in this level of comfort only after a year of dating. There was no logical explanation to why Soobin would look so comfortable there when the two were barely strangers before they started the game. 

He could tell that Soobin was surprised too. His attention was brought from his homework towards where Beomgyu dropped his bag near the doorway, before his eyes grew comically wide, lips opening and closing as if forming an explanation that wouldn’t materialize into words.

“Soobin hyung? Why are you here?” he asked carefully. 

“Yeonjun offered me to move in for a bit… until I get a new place. Don’t get me wrong, I—“

Without listening to the rest of his explanation, Beomgyu had stormed towards Yeonjun’s room, finding it empty. He lay in the bed as he furiously typed some texts to his boyfriend, who came into the room thirty minutes later and found him lying face down on the bed.

“Why are you being a baby, hm?”

Beomgyu whipped his gaze up so quickly that his vision swam for a split second before it fixed on his boyfriend. His perfect, beautiful boyfriend, who was still clad in the outfit he wore for the class earlier today. The crop sweater and the checkered black-yellow skirt that Beomgyu always loved.

This time, it did nothing to distract him. “One kiss, you said. Apparently you jumped several times and got him to move in already. Are you two going to get married tomorrow?”

He only noticed the bite in his voice when he saw the way Yeonjun’s expression hardened. It’s one thing to be all playful and try to annoy Yeonjun to the point that they ended up in a bickering session, but he was an open book to the elder, and Yeonjun always took it seriously whenever Beomgyu was feeling off. 

“Hey, what’s the matter?” Yeonjun’s voice grew softer as the bed dipped under his weight. “Talk to me.”

Beomgyu felt the warmth of his body pressed against his side, along with a slide of his arm around the small of his back and a soft breath caressing his cheek as the elder nuzzled against the side of his face. 

“Nothing. It’s your place anyway, you can do anything.”

There was a sigh, followed by a tightened grip around his waist. “I’m sorry, baby. I should’ve told you about it earlier, but it happened so quickly and we haven’t got a chance to sit down and talk. Now, talk to me. Do you mind that I took him in?”

He kept silent for a bit, letting the steam trickle away from his system and replaced by the comfort seeping into his body from the kisses to his neck.

“You were mad at him for taking away your photoshoot gig. What changed?”

“He got evicted from the uni’s dorm and he has nowhere to go. I couldn’t just leave him on the street,” he explained, before finally taking a hold on Beomgyu’s face to have their gazes locked. “But if you don’t like it, he will be gone in the morning.”

It was reassuring, knowing that he was still the first priority for the other’s decision making process. Because at the end of the day, only the two of them would remain.

“It’s fine. Even though he’s taking the room that you prepared for me,” he finally decided.

“I made that room for you last year. If you moved in now, you’d be sleeping with me in this bed.”

Another thing that was reassuring was that he felt flustered under Yeonjun’s flirty smile shot at him. It wasn’t just something that happened around Soobin and it might happen because he hadn’t been at the top of his flirting game. So, he shut Yeonjun up with a kiss, only to be tackled back into the bed. 

Because Yeonjun always gave more. He loved love, yet with every love that he received, he would return twice as much. The fleeting kiss Beomgyu pressed against the plush lips was returned by one that took his breath away, leaving such a mark that the only thing he could taste on his mouth even after the elder pulled away was  _ Yeonjun _ . 

“It’s rare to see you get all jealous anyway, it’s cute,” Yeonjun commented later on. 

That was the problem. Beomgyu wasn’t really a jealous type because his position in the relationship was secure. He was reminded daily of how loved he is and that Yeonjun only wanted him. And that was the reason why a conflict brewed inside his head for a moment there. 

The big question mark glaring at him – asking him if he was jealous over his boyfriend being this nice to someone else or Soobin paying attention to Yeonjun more than him. 

“It’s just cause this would give you more advantage to win the bet,” he excused.

Yeonjun thought for a bit. “Let’s make this place a no-game zone, then! No flirting shall go on inside the apartment, so we both would have an equal chance, okay?”

“You sure like making things harder for yourself.”

**━━━━━━━☆☆━━━━━━━**

Unlike Beomgyu who liked to play a quick game and win, Yeonjun enjoyed playing with his ‘food’.

A push and pull game; because he liked being chased, and he always made the first move to flirt only to make sure that his targets were crazy about him and chase him back in return. If dragged for too long, this always ended in a bad note, especially because the targets that ended up falling in love for real were caused by Yeonjun’s slow burn, which caused them to burn and crash.

The worst case happened to Eunjin, barely weeks ago before the holiday started. Her only mistake was showing interest to Yeonjun. 

This game between the two was initially made because someone was eyeing him, and it became a habit, to pick only the people who were potentially interested in one of the two. It behaved as a kind of punishment, for trying to hit on someone taken. 

Beomgyu could be cruel when he wanted to. One of the occasions included when someone tried to be brave and hit on Yeonjun; for example, landing a flirty punch on him, which Eunjin liked to do before the storm hit. 

Things started with a casual “Cho Eunjin. Make her ask us out on a date,” from Beomgyu, and escalated to a whispered “Will you leave your boyfriend for me, Junie?” as the girl cornered him at the department’s lounge. A hand sneaked behind his waist, teasing the chain belt he was wearing to fasten his skirt to his waist. 

It made him see red, the thought of leaving Beomgyu.

He really should’ve learned his lesson that day, as he was slapped across the face right there the moment he announced that all his affections towards Eunjin was only because of a bet he had with his boyfriend. Instead, he found himself sitting with a new target with a promise of a date barely a few weeks after the disaster that almost cost him all the friends he made in the department. 

“I can’t believe you actually agreed to this,” he said, gesturing to the plate of cake he had before him, one that was bought by the male sitting across of him. 

“You said I could treat you if I felt bad about the photoshoot gig. I  _ do _ feel bad, okay?” he grimaced, looking genuinely guilty about it. It was Yeonjun’s fault for making such a big deal sulking about it, but he hates losing, and now that he could use it to his advantage, there’s no way Yeonjun would let it go.

“Is that so?” he rested his chin on top of his palm as he stared at the latter. His lips curled into a lazy smile. “Or do you like the thought of going on a date with me?”

A flirty smile. A long stare. Suggestive statements. Footsies under the table. He could apply them to Soobin and next time, the guy would be the one looking for him to ask for another date. All these people did.

Except, he was responded by a few blinks from the taller, followed by a dimpled smile. “This is a date? I’ve never been to one before.”

As if that wasn’t enough of a strike to Yeonjun’s ego, their little encounter at this small café was interrupted by tinkling of a bell as the door opened, and a loud scream of  _ YEONJUN NOONA!  _ which made him straighten up on his seat, almost dropping his fork into his cup of coffee.

“Why the hell are you here?” he asked through a feigned smile and gritted teeth.

“Soobin hyung asked me to come over,” Kai, the thirdwheel, proudly announced. 

“Right, I owe him an egg tart and I saw some at their display. Wait a minute.”

Yeonjun watched in disbelief as his ‘date’ got up from his seat to purchase the dessert, replaced by Kai who stole a piece of his waffle the moment he sat down. Being petty, he snatched his fork from the younger, rolling his eyes. 

“You’re ruining my date.”

“You’re literally taken?”

“So?”

Kai crossed his arms across his chest, staring at him in disapproval until Yeonjun returned his gaze. “This is why Taehyun asked me to keep an eye on you two. You started a bet again, didn’t you?”

“Maybe,” he responded with a grin.

“You’re the worst, noona. Soobin hyung’s super nice, and you’re doing this to him?”

“Chill, it’s just a kiss. Even babies kiss nowadays,” he shrugged nonchalantly, eyes scanning the café to see what’s taking his date so long to come back. 

That was how he figured that Soobin might be in trouble, the moment he spotted the male standing away from the cashier with a phone to his ear, while his eyebrows furrowed in deep thought over the call. Kai was right about Soobin being  _ super nice _ , so he couldn’t figure out what would make Soobin look so troubled. 

He only addressed it after Kai left with his egg tarts. “What happened?”

“What do you mean?”

“You were fine before you had that call, and now you’re all restless. Your legs are shaking and you’re waiting for me to finish this waffle so you can leave. Isn’t that right?”

Soobin bit his lip, before exhaling a sigh. “I’m sorry. It’s not you, I swear.”

“Tell me, then.”

After staring him down for a few seconds, Yeonjun could see it palpably, when the resolution broke down on the latter’s face. Spiderwebs crack across the concrete wall, then a gap just big enough for Yeonjun to be let into his darkest space. 

“It’s just… my scholarship got downgraded after I took a leave, and they just told me that it took away my privilege of staying at the dorm for free. I can’t possibly pay them with such short notice.”

Financial problem. They were always the worst, and there’s nothing he could do about it in case it ended up offending the latter. 

“So that’s why you look so angry,” he said. 

“Yes… I probably need to call my dad to pick my stuff up, so I can’t stay longer for this…date?” 

There was a flash of frustration filling Soobin’s eyes for a split second. Behind his calm demeanour, this guy seemed to be holding something dark. The deep hatred that he accidentally showed when he picked up the phone earlier was a hint, as well as the weight air surrounding him when he talked about his dad.

Yeonjun never liked to meddle in other people’s problems, but Soobin was not the kind of guy who should be dealing with the darkness. He shone brighter with lights around him, unlike when he was forced into the shadow back in high school.

The impulsiveness hit him right there, and only became regrettable later on the moment he had to answer Beomgyu’s texts.

“Do you want to stay at my place for a bit? I have a spare room.”

It surprised even himself, that he would offer an almost stranger to share his apartment. It surprised him even more that Soobin agreed, and everything went by so fast that before he knew it, Soobin already settled in that spare room. 

What didn’t surprise him was the consequence of his actions. This always happened when he didn’t think enough. 

His chest ached the moment he saw Beomgyu lying down face first in his bed, looking so dejected about the whole arrangement. He sure liked the whole flirting game, had some encounters that would be a good material to laugh about in the future. 

If that little enjoyment cost the disappearance of Beomgyu's smile, it wasn't worth it.

“You trust me right, Beomgyu-ah?” he asked later that night, as he successfully kept Beomgyu from going back to his dorm. “That this is nothing? It’s just that he needed some help and I had the resources.”

His boyfriend gave him a long, careful stare that made him nervous. But he knew the answer before the words slip past Beomgyu’s lips. 

“You know I would trust you with my life.”

And this was why Yeonjun would never forgive them if anyone ever suggested him to leave his boyfriend. 

He liked being chased by people who adored him, but he would chase Beomgyu to the end of the world.

“You’re really doing this to win the bet, huh?” the younger asked sleepily the next morning, just after he got up and opened the door to Soobin walking around the living room, and closing the door back shut. He joined Yeonjun back in bed, hiding his head under Yeonjun’s shirt while the elder pet his head from over the fabric. 

“Is it so hard to believe that I’m doing this out of compassion?”

“Yes.”

“Ass.”

Beomgyu snorted. “What are you going to do afterwards, then? Things are not going to be pretty, and he’s living here.”

The question made Yeonjun silent for a second, actually dreading that inevitable scenario. He only found his voice back when Beomgyu’s head popped out of his shirt. Hair fluffy and messy tufts on top of his head.

“Like it’s going to happen anytime soon if you didn’t step up your flirting game,” he said with a scoff, a challenging edge to his smile. “You two looked so awkward. I’ll give it three weeks before you could get anywhere near his lips.”

He got smacked across the face with a pillow, his boyfriend already walking away from him when the soft cushion fell off. 

“Watch me.”

**━━━━━━━☆☆━━━━━━━**

“It’s Sunday and you chose to go out with me instead of spending time with your boyfriend at home?”

Beomgyu’s gaze snapped up from his phone towards him. His eyes narrowed at first. “You’re calling it home already.”

“Ah, I didn’t mean it in that way—“before he could come up with a clearer explanation the younger’s mood had changed like a light switch being flicked. A smile lit up his face, brighter than the sunlight that barely peeked through the leaves today.

This was a cold day, and Soobin wanted nothing more than to burrow into his blanket and sleep the day away. But he had agreed to the ‘date’, and now as he stared at Beomgyu’s arms clinging around his and radiating warmth to his side, he figured that this couldn’t be that bad.

Throughout the day, he figured out a few things about Choi Beomgyu too, and Choi Yeonjun along with him. Because as much as Beomgyu kept labelling his relationship as very casual and chill and potentially  _ open _ (“We go on dates with other people, and sometimes even go so far as kissing them? It’s not a problem as long as we tell each other, you know”), there was no mistaking that the two were only made for each other. 

It was in the way Beomgyu’s eyes softened every time a topic about Yeonjun came up, or the fact that one of the date spots he planned for this date was solely dedicated for his boyfriend’s birthday gift.

“Snow globe, really?” Soobin had to ask once again, even as they were already sitting inside the art and craft place, with the DIY package’s contents strewn across the long table they were seated at. 

The way Beomgyu’s eyebrows were furrowed with doubt did nothing much to convince him that this was a great idea, along with the pep talk that was directed more to himself. 

“We can do this, come on. We are from the art and humanities department? We live for arts!” 

“Beomgyu, I’m in the English literature faculty,” Soobin deadpanned. 

A handful of glitter powder was thrown to his face at that. “Language is also art. Stop whining now and make a cute little ball of art!”

They worked in silence for the most part, especially Beomgyu who seemed to be so invested in his little creation – a fox miniature seated in the middle of the foundation of the globe and tiny buildings in the background. It was only until a little later that he relaxed some more, probably just recalled that this was supposed to be a date.

Not that Soobin mind being ignored. What was he even thinking about when he agreed to go on a date with someone who’s already taken?

“You asked why I would risk making something ugly for Yeonjun’s birthday, but it’s because they like handmade gifts better. If they wanted something you can buy somewhere else, they could just buy it on their own.”

“That does make sense,” Soobin said, already given up on his simple snowball so he could watch the other work instead. “Most people wouldn’t bother, though. It’s easier to order something online.”

A shine of pride gleamed in Beomgyu’s eyes as he made a pause on his work to look at him. “That’s why they’re not dating most people, right? They’re dating me.” 

Soobin returned his stare, lips parting in a sigh. “I read a research that concluded something about how people look the prettiest when they are in love. Is this how you keep your pretty boy reputation?”

Aside from the fact that Beomgyu was a fun person to be with and he provided good non-caffeine drinks for his library visits, there was also a deep satisfaction bubbling inside him whenever he watched the male get flustered. How his eyes shook subtly and the colour pink spread from his lips to his cheek.

This time, he almost dropped the glass globe that he had been working on for the past hour. A yell ripped through the silence of the store.

Another thing that never ceased to amuse him was that Beomgyu kept trying to look confident despite all these. Again today, he was the one who dropped the line

“Do you want to kiss me?” 

It happened out of the blue, as they stood in the middle of the busy street. Soobin was thanking him for treating him to dinner in one of the fried chicken places, and it was not an ideal situation for a romantic scene. Under the neon board of the chicken’s place, with people constantly brushing against their sides as they acted as a congestion of the pedestrian traffic. 

The scene was not ideal, yet Soobin had the urge to lean in for that kiss right there. 

Beomgyu was so,  _ so  _ close to him that he could probably count his eyelashes. Just one push.

He probably would have, if only it was not for someone bumping against Beomgyu’s back, sending him stumbling forward against his chest, yelling as he almost dropped the paper bag that held the snowglobe he poured his blood sweat and tears on. 

“Oops! Sorry, I didn’t see the road.”

The voice was eerily familiar that Soobin pried his attention away from Beomgyu who he’s still holding closely to keep him from falling. He was not mistaken when he looked up to see Taehyun, not looking guilty at all despite his words.

His eyes were full of questions and disapproval, glaring at the back of Beomgyu’s head before whipping his gaze back to Soobin. His mouth forming the words.  _ “What the hell, hyung?” _

Soobin grimaced at the implication of the mouthed question, knowing that he must be pissed to spot the two going out after the powerpoint presentation he gave on Soobin’s first week back at the campus. There would be a long story to tell, and he preferably shouldn’t do it with the person of question around. 

“Hi, Taehyun! Fancy meeting you here,” he greeted him instead, feeling Beomgyu stiffen in his arms, but still refusing to move away.

“Soobin hyung,” he acknowledged, though still not looking so friendly. He only relaxed a little when the elder mouthed back at him  _ tomorrow _ , nodding. “The road is slippery and there are bad people around. Be careful, okay?” 

The implication made Soobin snort, but still keeping the smile on his face as Taehyun walked away. 

Beomgyu only released himself from the support of his arms once the other male was out of sight. “Taehyunnie is so mean to me now, we used to be good friends back in high school.”

“I wonder why.”

“It’s just…” he trailed off, looking like he wanted to tell a story for a moment there, but ended up biting onto his lower lip instead. “Never mind. I’ll walk you home, okay?”

The kiss wasn’t mentioned for the rest of the night.

But Soobin wasn’t stupid.

He knew that  _ kissing _ was involved in whatever scheme the couple was playing on him. Kai and Taehyun made it sound like the two were professional flirts, and their targets never found out until the end that they were only used as an object for this little game in their relationship. 

Looking at how they applied their flirting skill to him, Soobin concluded that those previous targets must have wanted to be tricked, deluding themselves that they had scored a spot in this beautiful relationship Beomgyu and Yeonjun had.

Soobin? Not so much. 

He did enjoy the chase. The way those two would drop hints about kissing, hanging the baits so close to his face that he could take a bite any time they wanted. 

Aside from the date, Beomgyu sometimes dropped it on text messages and even random tweets whenever he showed up on the website

> @ **chwebeomgyu** : wanna kiss, hyung? <3

and Soobin just knew that it was indirected towards him because Beomgyu did not call Yeonjun by  _ hyung _ . 

And Yeonjun, Yeonjun was bolder.

He always put Soobin in situations that made it so  _ easy _ for him to just lean in and kiss the elder. In the corridors between classes, in the lounge, by the forbidden toilet cubicle, in his class.

The one time he asked Soobin to fasten a choker around his neck, staring at his face the whole time as Soobin tried hard to connect the connectors behind Yeonjun’s pretty neck. He had shamelessly leaned in until their foreheads touched. Voice low as he spoke, though with the playful nasal hint still present.

“Thank you, Soobinie? Do you want a kiss?”

Soobin said no, and thought mildly to himself as he watched Yeonjun walk away that it was not a lie for once. Rather than having Yeonjun kiss him on the mouth, he was thinking more of planting a kiss to his neck, seeing how pretty the choker made it look. 

It became a fun game on his own, too, that he decided to drag it for a little longer. Yet he felt guilty, too, seeing how Yeonjun went all the way to letting him stay in the spare room in the apartment and Beomgyu still brought him a portion of food every time he stopped by to bring his boyfriend dinner. 

This was it, Soobin thought to himself as he watched the two sitting on the living room’s carpeted floor, the feeling of being a part of something beautiful. Yet he also knew that it was a wishful thinking as he could never have a place in this. He realized that during this very same night, as he watched from across the room, how the two ended up falling asleep together while watching Toy Story 4 on TV.

Yeonjun’s head was tipped back to rest on the couch while Beomgyu had his face hidden into the crook of his boyfriend’s neck. This couldn’t be a comfortable position, but they looked so content, unmoved even as Soobin draped a blanket over their frames and switched off the TV.

Soobin did not believe in love. He had watched how love only made people crash and burn in heartbreak. He watched as his mother walked away with his siblings, leaving him under the care of a heartbroken dad who turned into an alcoholic. 

He watched for the majority of his teenage years, how his father was still so hung up on the love of his life even after a decade of being left alone, finally losing the last bit of his usefulness as a father when he let his only son take a leave from his higher education just to take care of his drunken ass.

Love only ends in pain, so why would it be any different for these two? 

That was the reason he played along with their flirting game, the curiosity that urged him to find an answer. To answer his curiosity: Are they only staying sane and in love by breaking other people’s hearts? Is that the only key to a happy relationship?

His answer came in those bad nights where Yeonjun would come back to the apartment looking so lifeless. Eyes void of the brightness and confidence that made him The Choi Yeonjun everyone knew in the department. Those nights were also the nights where Beomgyu had stood by in the apartment, welcoming Yeonjun into his warm arms and comforting whispers. 

Everyone thought that Yeonjun only took care of Beomgyu, but Beomgyu was his anchor. A safety net to fall onto whenever he couldn’t keep himself up on the tightrope he walked on every day of his life.

It was heartwarming, yet also made him sick in the stomach. The prospect that true love existed, but bestowed to the kind of these two, who played with people’s hearts.

Soobin wanted to prove them wrong, wanted to show them that there was no Beomgyu and Yeonjun and there were only bored university students pretending to be a couple to feed their boredom. So far, Yeonjun and Beomgyu were good at doing their parts in the relationship, and it made him feel sick.

So he needed to up his game before he lost his part of the bet. 

If a kiss was what it took, then he would end it with a kiss.

It could end on a good note; that Yeonjun and Beomgyu would just move on after the kiss, and celebrate another win.

Or it could end with his win: 

proving that true love did not exist and he could actually make one of the  _ perfect couple _ to look at him.

That’s also what he told Taehyun when the younger cornered him the next day about his date with Beomgyu. It was a silly plan at first, and now it became real because he had voiced his thought. 

“I’m going to try making them fall for me instead, Taehyunnie. It’s about time someone came and gave them a taste of their own medicine.”

Taehyun was astonished for a moment there, lips parted in surprise and eyes growing bigger for a tad moment. The only verbal response he had was a tiny “You’re just as crazy as them,” tumbling past his lips, barely caught by Soobin, but only brought a smile to his face.

"Maybe I am."


	3. round 3: lonely, unfair, guilt

**Round 3**

**━━━━━━━** **lonely, unfair, guilt** **━━━━━━━**

After the first week of staying at this apartment, there are several things that Soobin still needed to get used to. 

1\. Yeonjun and Beomgyu had small fights over the most random things. It ranged from edibility level of pasta that had been dropped to the table, to losing games. That one time they bickered in the middle of the night, Beomgyu had slipped into Soobin's room, barging in like he had the right to be there. On his bed, squeezing against his side. 

"This was supposed to be my room before you waltzed in and took it from me," was his excuse, and Soobin couldn't say anything to counter that.

Beggars can't be choosers.

2\. The source of Beomgyu's dark coloured attires mostly came from Yeonjun's wardrobe. 

This was something that Soobin noticed accidentally. If he didn't see the younger sleeping in the apartment, then he would be seen at the library with one of his cute hats and pastel coloured sweaters.

3\. Yeonjun started knitting when he was stressed.

In the one week alone, he had almost dropped his heart to the floor whenever he caught Yeonjun staring blankly into the air while his fingers worked deftly on his knitting needles. It was not so weird, if only it was not for his choice of place.

On top of the kitchen counter. In the dry bath tub. Right in front of Soobin's door. On top of the washing machine.

That was this morning. 

As if he wasn't already nervous enough to start his day, he walked out of his room and found Yeonjun sitting on top of the glass table in the middle of his living room. The glass table that looked too expensive to be in a college student's private housing. That was a question for another day.

This time, he was more concerned about the knitting. Knitting never meant well in Yeonjun's case.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

It took a full minute for Yeonjun to snap out of his daze. His eyes blinked a few times before they focused on Soobin. Then a smile spread over his lips. "Why wouldn't I be okay? I'm just knitting."

Another thing about Yeonjun's stress knitting is that Yeonjun wasn't aware that he was doing it for stress relief. It was an endearing thing he found from the elder, stripping off the perfect and untouchable persona he had in the face of the world.

"It's Saturday, why are you up so early?" the pink haired asked again when Soobin went off to grab his shoes.

"They called me in to take pictures," he said, quickly switching the topic. "And then Taehyun's going to help me find a new place."

"Soobin."

The serious air behind Yeonjun's voice made him stop in his track, nibbling on his lower lip as he turned around to look at the elder. The initial dazed look in Yeonjun’s foxy eyes was replaced by intimidation as the elder gave him a scan from head-to-toe.

"Yes?"

"You're going to take pictures looking like this?"

"Yes?" He said, confident in his choice of his usual button-up shirt and jeans combination. 

The confidence slowly ebbed away the longer Yeonjun stared at him, scanning him from head to toe and making him squirm on his feet. There were times where he looked soft and sleepy, and then there was this Yeonjun who looked intimidating. Ready to pounce.

And pounce he did. 

Mostly, the attack was directed to his clothing choice. Soobin found out that he had missed the chance to escape this situation when he stayed there waiting for the other to get to him. Before he knew it, he was being dragged into a walk in closet, staring in both astonishment and confusion at the row of clothing and accessories Yeonjun owned.

(4. Yeonjun was filthy rich.)

What started as a comical stress-knitting morning turned into a dress up session. The button up he deemed to be the best he owned was discarded to the corner of the room, replaced by a black shirt that hugged his frame nicely. 

"They have the same colour and shape, how could they look different on me?" he frowned to the mirror as he checked his final reflection.

Yeonjun smiled smugly from behind him. "That's my midas touch, baby. Honestly, your face already helps a lot, so you don't have to dress up fancy. Must be nice to have a pretty face."

"You would know the best..."

"Huh?"

Soobin shrugged, pretending to check his non-existent watch so he could get up and leave the room. "Look at the time! I have to run to the campus real soon." It ended up as a failure as he was shoved back to sit down under Yeonjun's demanding glare.

"Let me just fix your hair real quick. I bet you just got up from bed and didn't even comb your hair."

Bingo. Why do you have to comb your hair when your hair is this short? Nonsense.

Feeling Yeonjun's fingers moved in his hair, Soobin let his eyes fall shut, enjoying the comfort of the touch while also avoiding to look into Yeonjun's eyes from this proximity. He was lulled into a sense of comfort blanketing his frame, making him succumb into the sensation, enough for his brain to turn into a mush. 

"Thank you for this, hyung," he said softly. 

The reaction came quickly in the tension of Yeonjun's eyes. As his eyes snapped open, he was met with the sight of the elder's jaws tightening. 

"Oh. I'm sorry. Yeonjun-ssi."

He snorted, taking off his glasses off his own face to put on Soobin. The lenses turned out to be non-prescribed. Soobin wished that the glasses could blur his gaze just for the moment, so he wouldn't have to see the uneasiness and beat himself up for calling Yeonjun the one thing he wished to not be referred to as. 

"It's fine, really. Huening calls me noona too, and some people still call me hyung once they dropped the honorifics. I can't stop all of them."

Soobin bit his lip, still not convinced judging from the reaction. "But you didn't like it."

"Well, the thing is, I don't really care how people refer to me. I only care when it's the people I kiss..." he trailed off, his gaze flitted down to Soobin's lips for a split second. It was a subconscious, accidental gesture, yet Soobin could feel the weight of the stare. 

So he averted his gaze, pressing his lips together to get rid of the sensation.

Yeonjun's voice had returned into its cheerful state as he drew away. A smile made its way back to his tone. "And you're welcome. If you snatched my job, the least you could do is to ace it."

Soobin grimaced. "Still, I feel like I have to give you something."

"What is your idea? How about..."

"A kiss?" He's the one who brought it up this time, already went through the same thing way too many times to recognize the playful look in Yeonjun's face. 

This brought a surprised look to the elder's face, followed by a snort. "You'd do that? I mean I won't say no." and just like any other days, he seemed to be entertained by the idea of Soobin turning him down this time too. 

Typical Choi Yeonjun who fed on the thrill of the chase.

Except, that did not happen.

"I would do it."

"Really?" Yeonjun blinked a few times, an amusing reaction for someone who got voted #1 in the survey of 'Student you want to kiss the most' in the last Christmas party this department had. "You don't really have to do it though, I was just offering random things as usually."

Soobin stared at him, unrelented. "What if I wanted to do it?"

The foxy eyes searched his face for a moment. A moment too long that he started doubting his own decision, almost backing up from the challenge when Yeonjun moved forward. The proximity between them made it hard to breath. 

Yeonjun was the type to take your breath away, after all. Even in pajama bottoms and a tanktop.

"If you are so sure you wanted this then... I'm going to take off your glasses first," Yeonjun said, doing exactly what he stated as he pulled the specs by their frame. "This is your last chance to bolt away, because I'm going to kiss you in three... “

Yeonjun started counting, and with each count, he grew closer. “…two... one." 

So, so close that Soobin could feel his breath on his cheek. Or the beating and clawing in his own chest over the way their chests bumped, reacting to the pretty sight before him. The way Yeonjun's lips parted. The tingle on his lips as he thought about kissing Yeonjun. 

But Yeonjun stopped just an inch before their lips met, lips curled into a kitten smirk when Soobin opened his eyes to catch it.

"Just kidding. I—“

Before he could skitter away from the topic again, Soobin was the one who made the first move this time. It came in how his fingers shot up to hold Yeonjun's chin. Softly, carefully. They cradled the elder's face in his hand, keeping him still as he leaned in to finally

 _finally_ , capture those plush lips into a kiss. 

The soft gasp marked their first kiss, along with an explosion of cherry lip balm taste on his own lips when they parted. It was the kind of kiss that take your breath away without suffocating you. It was laced with a prolonged yearning, so much that he almost betrayed himself by thinking about how _right_ it felt. 

When nothing about this kiss was right in the first place.

Yeonjun only stared at him with his mouth still parted from the kiss, as he kept his face on the elder's face, brushing over his glossy lips with a thumb.

He was ushered out from the closet by a very flustered Yeonjun before he could tell him about how beautiful he looked right there. 

==

The second kiss started with a phone call:

("Can you help me check my cafe's inventory? Apparently I have to report this stuff, I have no idea how these things work.."

"Why do you think I'd know how to do inventory? I'm literally a teacher in training."

"Because you have one extra braincell than I do?" )

and then it was less of noting down inventory and more of lying down on the library's floor. Because it was Saturday, and a whole library for just the two of them was a good place to lie down and stare at the high ceiling.

"I knew you were studying language, but I never thought you'd take the teaching direction," Beomgyu brought it up somewhere along their silent staring battle with the intricate pattern in the ceiling. 

"You're talking like you've known me for a while," he snorted.

"Well, you're living with my boyfriend, so you've passed the screening. I've known enough about you."

That made the elder arch his eyebrow, looking at the side of his face with interest while Beomgyu was busy drawing doodles in the ceiling with the tip of his index finger. 

"Like what?"

"Your mouth is curled like an anime cat mouth, and you have the blessed genes with dimples and long legs and a nice ass. You volunteered to teach in a kindergarten school a few days every week for extra credits, and you took a year off last year to take care of your father."

The last part made Soobin tense up, squeezing his eyes shut as he was reminded of the ghost of last year. The worst year in his life, full of drunken shouts and curses. The year that caused him to be left behind by the people in his batch, got held behind from graduating quickly, and cost him his free dormitory lease privilege.

"Have you been stalking me?" he ended up asking, exhaling a slow, long sigh to stave off the anger from his system. 

"Are you upset that I know more things about you?"

That was Beomgyu, sensitive about the change of air around him that Soobin could never hide his reactions from him. The guy also was the type to always find a way to address it in the most playful way that wouldn't make him uncomfortable, carefully skittering around the topic until the other was comfortable enough.

Beomgyu made it easier to be around him. To _want_ to be around him.

"I know enough about you too," Soobin said, changing the topic swiftly so he could put a smile on his face again without that clench on his chest. "I know that you like exploring your fashion, but only those that fit your personas. You played guitar a lot, I think I've seen you giving shows during lunch break in high school? Your family moved back to Daegu last year, but you're staying for uni."

"Those are just the ones I told you."

"Well I'm not a stalker like—“

"Hold on," Beomgyu interrupted him, making the teasing smile on his lips froze as he was caught by surprise. "You remember me from high school?"

"You were my underclassmate, but I don't think we've ever talked. You were that guy who always walked around with a guitar, right? Never caught your name either. People are intimidating in high school."

There was a hint of disappointment flit across Beomgyu's face, which vanquished quickly before he could make a comment about it. "You thought I was intimidating?"

"You are. Yeonjun too, even when his hair was still black and he looked like a baby."

"They did," Beomgyu laughed at that. "But we were not intimidating. We wanted to talk to you for a while, too, since we got to know everyone in that school except from that handsome tall guy who everyone silently had a crush on."

"You're the second person who told me this," he groaned, covering his face in embarrassment. 

"So that basically confirms it. Everyone had a crush on you, Soobin hyung."

"Including you?" Soobin whipped his gaze towards him quickly that Beomgyu didn't have enough time to hide the flush that quickly made it to his face, followed by a flustered stutter as he stumbled with his words.

"M-me? I had a c-crush on you?" 

"You're the one who said it!"

Soobin was starting to enjoy this side of Beomgyu, how that flirty guy from that party never existed to begin with; a mere persona Beomgyu created to fit better with his appearance as well as the flirting game he had going on. He did get Soobin shy and flustered that day, but the elder found that he liked this version of the male better. 

That was, until he got a hardcover of a book pressed to his face in a smack. "Oops, that slipped out of my hand," Beomgyu said.

The book laid there on his face for a few dangerous seconds. He stayed there in silence, taking three deep breaths and only reacting as he heard a shuffling sound on his side. The sign of Beomgyu trying to run away upon knowing what was waiting for him. 

With a loud thud of the book hitting the floor, Beomgyu's yell echoed in the vacant library as Soobin got up just in time to pull him back down by the hem of his sweater. They wrestled there for what felt like hours. Adrenaline rushed throughout his body, along with exhilaration of hearing Beomgyu's panicked shrieks turned into laughter.

"I'm sorry! I swear—let go of me and I'll do whatever you want!"

That defeated whine was music to his ear, enough that he finally loosened his grips on the other's wrist, and that was when he realized the position he was in. The common position in romantic comedies he'd seen out of spite, where the lead characters fought and somehow one of them was pinned against a surface that was conveniently materializing behind them. 

This was it. 

Beomgyu winced as the back of his head hit the wooden shelf, not like he could do anything to prevent it as his arms were held by Soobin. His foot was pressing against the elder's tummy, ready to kick him away but failing to do so when he also came into a realization of the position they were in.

"Whatever I want? That's such a bold offer."

"Beggars can't be choosers. My head hurts, can you get lost or like, rub it?" Beomgyu hissed, finally snatching away his arms now that the grips were loose enough. 

But Soobin wasn't pulling away yet, only staring at the other silently until Beomgyu also realized the position they were in. The proximity and the weight of Soobin's body pressing against his foot, pinning him against the bookshelf. His eyes rounded up briefly, and as his eyelashes dropped, Soobin followed them.

Lower. And lower. Until his sight landed on the pair of parted lips. 

He really hated to give in to the romantic comedy aspect of the situation, since they did not live in a movie or a young adult novel. Yet here Soobin was, drawn by the way Beomgyu's lips looked, and used it as an excuse as if he hadn't been thinking about kissing him all day. 

Or for a while, ever since he saw the couple kiss at the party. 

It was not his fault that he gave in to it when Beomgyu let his leg drop from between them, eliminating the only thing holding him back.

The kiss started with them holding their breaths out of anticipation, and then a bump of their noses, which was followed by laughter. Because they had their eyes closed and both of them were too excited to lean in for the kiss, that it turned them into a couple of teenagers who hadn’t had their first kiss. 

When their lips finally met, it was with a taste of smiles on their lips. The kiss was sweet and playful, just the way Beomgyu was. 

Beomgyu kisses the way he loves.

He also didn't stop. Fingers curled around the front of Soobin's shirt to keep him close, as their lips melded in the kiss that had turned from a chaste and sweet one into a breathtaking one. Neither of them wanted to let go, but Soobin finally got to pull away, not regretting it as he caught the sight of Beomgyu's face yearning for more of the kiss. Feeding into the fire that he had sparked inside the other.

His head was tilted back against the bookshelf as his lips glistened under the warm lighting of the library. 

Soobin had to tear his gaze so he wouldn't give in for another kiss. 

His gaze landed on the front of his black shirt, that was now wrinkled from how hard Beomgyu gripped onto the fabric. Then he remembered that it was Yeonjun's shirt, and that he was just kissing his boyfriend a moment ago. The thought made him laugh, earning a questioning hum from the latter.

He didn’t bother to explain, only pressing his smile against Beomgyu’s lips to capture them into another kiss. A slow, unhurried one this time. They had all the time in the world, and it might have been hours of kissing before they stopped, as they lost track of the time. It ended as he nuzzled his face into Beomgyu’s shoulder, then a bite to his neck that gained a hitch of breath from the male.

“Uh… fuck,” Beomgyu’s soft breath was laced with the cuss, and Soobin’s lips curled into a smug smile when he pulled away, barely holding himself back from stealing that right from the younger’s lips again. 

When he planned to kiss Beomgyu, he certainly thought about an innocent kiss, not one that would linger on his lips with the promise of more. 

_Fuck_. Indeed. How he had done his part of the bet, and he was feeling all kinds of bad emotions only. 

What happened to proving that true love did not exist? Now he wanted it to exist instead, could feel his heart yearning to be a part of it just so he could chase after this feeling forever. Both the taste of Yeonjun’s lip balm and Beomgyu’s smile on his lips.

The worst thing was that, he wasn't sure whose part of true love he wanted to steal just to fit himself in.

It was a long day, and within this day alone, he had failed two things:

(Not the photoshoot, because he magically aced it.) 

First, he never got to find a new place to move into, as he cancelled his plan with Taehyun so easily the moment he got the invitation from Beomgyu. It just showed his determination about moving out from Yeonjun's place.

Which was close to zero.

Second, he might have lost the bet, because he went home after his part time job into the couple sleeping on the couch. It looked so uncomfortable, with Yeonjun laid down on the sofa, head almost fell off the edge of it, while Beomgyu was sprawled over half his body. Face pressed into Yeonjun's chest.

They seemed to be detached from the rest of the world as they were lost in their own little world. Soobin had seen it that night at the party, the gleam in Beomgyu's eyes as he kissed his lover. The way the party noises and music seemed to die down when they kissed.

He had always known it, even before he signed up to be the target of those two's affections for fun. That was why it hit harder. The guilt. 

It grew stronger as he crept towards the sofa to put a blanket over the two, feeling his lips tingled from the ghost of their kisses. The kisses he was not supposed to feel on _his_ lips, because Beomgyu and Yeonjun only belonged to each other.

That was why he started to hate himself.

He hated himself for wanting _more._

**━━━━━━━☆☆━━━━━━━**

Yeonjun prides himself to be someone that never showed any flaw, but he knew that a human couldn’t be free of flaws. 

His one fatal flaw that constantly brings troubles into his life is that he did things impulsively, do it first and think about a way to undo it later. This one flaw is also the one that follows every second of his stay in his own home.

Choi Soobin. The victim of his impulsive decision two times already.

The very same Choi Soobin who imprinted his presence all over his safe place now, barely two weeks into moving in. He was _there_ every time Yeonjun turned. At the kitchen table working on his homework, or prepping some sandwich that looked horrendous with a lot of toppings stuffed inside. At the living room table past midnight, switching through the random late night shows on TV and perked up at the sight of Yeonjun coming out from his room, his smile shone brighter than the flickering light from the TV. 

He was there whenever Yeonjun was looking for his boyfriend too, which was mainly at the campus.

It was a busy time during the semester and Beomgyu stopped coming over as often to the apartment, so Yeonjun's only consolation between drowning in pieces of garments for his projects and mannequin was seeing his boyfriend at the campus. 

Except seeing his boyfriend came with seeing Soobin too, and it was hard to see the taller male and his dimpled smile without thinking about the kiss. Or the fact that the guy had to constantly see him walk around his place shirtless. Or the fact that his boyfriend was still trying to get Soobin to kiss him, _too_.

And Yeonjun. It slipped off his mind that he had to tell Beomgyu that he had won the challenge.

Exactly three days ago. 

"Beomgyu, we need to talk," he did attempt one time, that moment he spotted the guy in the lobby and reached him just in time before he was whisked away to another class by his friends. 

The fear in Beomgyu's eyes was equally horrifying to him that he didn't get to say it then. Especially when he started panicking. 

"Are you breaking up with me?"

"What, no!" he exclaimed, watching as the fear in Beomgyu's face morphed into confusion. 

"Why do you sound like that! Don't scare me!"

"You know, the thing with Soobin..."

Beomgyu's eyes rounded up right there, and Yeonjun almost thought that he did something wrong again, only for the younger to lift up his watch in alarm. "I'm almost late to a meeting with my academic counselor!”

“We’ll talk later then, promise?” Yeonjun sighed.

“Yes, but only if you promised not to drop that ‘we need to talk’ shit on me ever again.”

“Promise,” he shook his head, grinning. And then there was a kiss pressed to his mouth, and he lost the chance right there as he was tongue tied. 

Eventually, it was Soobin who brought up the kiss.

In Yeonjun’s kitchen, wearing an apron that he never thought he owned, and using the tiny oven toaster he never used after buying out of impulse. He had gotten accustomed to Soobin’s presence in the apartment, but he hadn’t noticed how _fitting_ he was in there. 

Yeonjun never stayed home for long, always thinking that something was missing. Soobin easily filled the missing piece of the puzzle. 

“Hey, sorry I used your oven. And kitchen. And everything else,” he grimaced, straightening up from where he was hunched over the table and eyeing the oven’s window closely.

“You can use anything since you live here.”

“Oh right, about that,” Soobin said, gathering Yeonjun’s attention again from where he was taking a bottle of drink from the fridge. “I’m still trying to find a place. The guy I found from last week suddenly doesn't need a roommate anymore.”

“It’s fine.”

“I’m sorry.”

Yeonjun closed the fridge’s door and heaved a sigh, walking over to the taller male who seemed to shrink under the weight of his gaze. He’d been told that he looked extra grumpy fresh out of slumber.

“Stop apologizing. When I let you sleep in that room, didn’t I say that you could stay as long as you want?”

This was it, the moment that impulsiveness hit. It might have been cause by the storm brewing inside Soobin’s eyes. He hated it, whenever a certain thought seemed to make it into the male’s head, and then slowly replaced by the guilt for even feeling the hatred. 

It was the same look in his eyes back at the cafe, and Yeonjun found himself giving into the urge again. The urge that he would later translate into the urge to make Soobin smile without having to earn it.

“Say, what if you stopped looking for a place and just pay your rent here? I’ll give you a generous price since you’re just taking that one room.”

“I don’t think…”

“It’s hard to find a good place these days. If you live here, you can just walk to uni and you won’t have to adjust to a new roommate. You get an—“

“Yeonjun-ssi,” the firmness of Soobin’s voice snapped Yeonjun out of his narration. “I kissed you. Is that not weird for you that I’m living here? For Beomgyu?”

This was the first time Yeonjun was ever put at loss of words. 

It wasn’t like it was his first time being put on the spot after winning the bet. He had done his share of breaking people’s hearts; ditching them after scoring the date he needed to win the game, humiliating them in front of everyone when they confessed, getting slapped for rejecting someone’s advances, getting exposed on the internet.

None of them willingly removed himself from Yeonjun’s life like this.

He could just agree, kick Soobin out and become the detached guy he was after obtaining what he wanted. The thing was, he didn’t want that. 

He wanted Soobin in his kitchen, baking whatever it was that made his apartment smell good. Or in his living room, giggling over his silly TV shows.

“It was just a kiss. We can just forget it and move on? It’s not like we can’t be friends anymore after we…”

“We can?”

Soobin’s voice dropped into a whisper, as well as his gaze, dropping to Yeonjun’s lips. And that was when Yeonjun felt hyperaware of everything. The sound of the oven working. The faint morning workout playlist from his room. The way the two were trapped in yet another position that left an uncomfortable proximity between them, yet comfortable enough for a kiss. The weight of Soobin’s hand on his waist. 

As Yeonjun caught the way Soobin’s lips parted with a soft sigh, he wanted nothing more than to capture them into a kiss. Could already feel the plumpness of the other’s lips against his own, just like last time.

That was when he knew he was doomed. 

One kiss was necessary for the bet. Two kisses? Would that make him a cheater?

“We can!” he said a little too loudly as he pulled away, laughing to ease off the tension that was floating on the air between them. “Friends kiss each other all the time.”

“They absolutely do not.”

“They do, too.”

“Do they kiss their friend’s boyfriend too?”

“Beomgyu doesn’t—“

“I kissed him too,” Soobin interrupted, making the smile freeze on his face before it faded. “I kissed Beomgyu too.”

A casual talk has become a potentially destructive one because apparently Yeonjun and Beomgyu did not communicate as well as they thought..

The one thing that they did well – talking. They did well discussing how corrupted the world is, or how the fashion industry has failed with the appearance of the cow patterns. They failed when it came to talking about their relationship. 

After all, it started with a fight, then a kiss, then more kisses afterwards. 

They did not talk or set the term about their relationship. How open it was. What they are supposed to do with the victims of their little games after the bet ended. Everything just fell into places all the time, that they never thought something like this would happen. 

The day they both won the bet, and didn’t bother to brag to the other about it. The day a bet became less of a bet, and potentially developed into something more.

The day the comfort he gained from being with Beomgyu was laced with _fear._

“We need to talk.”

Yeonjun broke his promise that night, as he dropped the line again on a call. He received a long silence from the line, so quiet that could _hear_ the smile died down from Beomgyu’s lips. The male must have sensed that Yeonjun really meant it this time, and the response he got was a soft promise to be at Yeonjun’s place as soon as he got off work. 

“No, I’m outside, come out for a bit,” he said, bouncing lightly on the heels of his feet as he waited for his boyfriend. 

The library café. 

He could remember the previous year, as they joked around about opening a café, only for Yeonjun to buy a portion of the school’s library the next week after. It was a quiet place that drove Beomgyu crazy at times, yet also a safe place for him. That’s why he waited outside, watching as the male made a little run from the display window, until the he spotted Yeonjun. 

How he hated making Beomgyu look like this, eyes cast down as he walked slowly towards the elder. Not his bouncy, loud Beomgyu. 

“You even went all the way here, we know how much you hate the library—too many rules and all,” he laughed softly, trying to break the quietness between them. “Are you breaking up with me for real—“

“I kissed Choi Soobin,” he blurted out quickly, watching as the smile on Beomgyu’s face faltered right as he processed the information. 

“You called me out here to brag about winning? I guess that’s valid. Congrats! What’s the score again? Six to four?”

There was a sigh of defeat and a hand offered towards him for a handshake that would mark the end of the game. There was a twitch on Beomgyu’s smile that betrayed the whole pretending game he was doing. There was a taste of lie on the air, so palpable that Yeonjun could feel it materializing on his tongue. 

It stung his tastebuds with the bitter taste.

Down, and down to his throat, cutting off his oxygen intake he started to feel dizzy from the emotions that replaced the air inside his lungs. 

“Are you falling for Soobin?” the question felt foreign as it rolled off his tongue. 

“What? M-me?” he pointed to himself, then tried to ease off the tension with yet another laughter. It floated in the air between them, then crashed to the floor. Dissipating. 

“You didn’t tell me that you’ve won the bet a few days ago. You’ve been avoiding me ever since.“

“I did not!”

“Choi Beomgyu.”

The firmness in his tone made the other flinch, looking like he shrunk for a second there, avoiding Yeonjun’s gaze as he stared at the floor. The urge to pull the younger into his arms was strong. After all, he had promised himself to always make his Beomgyu smile, ever since his breakdown the first day they met back then.

It hurt him too, that he had to be the cause of Beomgyu’s frown. 

Yet it was hard to keep his promise when he was keeping himself from breaking into pieces.

“Are you not in love with me anymore?”

It broke him, the moment those words left his lips, because Choi Yeonjun doesn’t know who he is the moment he ceased being the person Choi Beomgyu is in love with. 

  
  


**━━━━━━━☆☆━━━━━━━**

College days are the period where people find themselves. They experience things and meet new people, figuring out their places in the world that keep them going day to day.

Beomgyu thought that he had found everything on the first year of college:

> Popularity √
> 
> Extra income √
> 
> Good grades √
> 
> A loving significant other (?)

then he realized that all he had was Yeonjun. 

He did not know how to keep going as Choi Beomgyu who was not in love with Choi Yeonjun.

Especially not when the last time he saw the elder was in a fight. Words after words repeating in his head like the words scribbled in permanent markers all over the bathroom’s walls. Ironically, that’s where he was, sitting on top of a dysfunctional toilet’s lid, inside the forbidden cubicle at the third floor’s male bathroom.

It was funny, how you’ve had years of loving each other and sweet nothings whispered to each other lips to last a lifetime, yet all you could remember after a breakup was the ugly fight at the end of the relationship.

He couldn’t even remember the last time they kissed anymore. Or the last time they exchanged _I love you_ s. 

There was only the fight replaying inside his head like a broken record.

(It was calm at first, and then the cold air melted from the corridor, swallowed by the waves of anger the two had tried so hard to keep in. They had bickered a lot throughout their relationship, but not like _this_.

Not with actual anger dripping from their tone. Not with the coldness. Not with the chasm between them, that they couldn’t take a step closer to hold the other’s hand and told him that it’s going to be okay.

“It’s unfair that you’re questioning me, when you didn’t tell me right away either!” Beomgyu was the one who lost it first.

“Isn’t that because you’ve been avoiding me? You two are together all the time at the campus. You might as well have dated him already.”

“And you two are together all the time at home. You even kissed him somewhere you said was off limits. How far have you gone?”

“What the fuck are you asking?”

“Are _you_ actually falling for him?” the question was thrown back, and the silence only earned a scoff from the younger. Fingers running through his dark locks. “See, you can’t—“

“So what if I am?”

Yeonjun looked straight into his eyes when he said that, and Beomgyu hated that he had learned all the ways to understand his lover. Because now he knew that Yeonjun actually meant it when he said it.)

He was reduced from being Choi Yeonjun’s boyfriend into this pathetic art department guy who had to hide in a bathroom cubicle during lunch time just so he wouldn’t meet his ex-boyfriend and his new crush. After all, it was his punishment, for letting his heart fall for that dimpled smile so easily. 

_The next time you’re trying to break someone’s heart, it might be the end of you two_

He could still hear Heejin’s voice from the party barely a few weeks ago. It made him burst into laughter, so loud in the confined space that the person who just walked into the restroom scurried out right away after exhaling a horrified gasp. 

His laughter died down as he had his face in his palm, peeking from in between his fingers towards the messy handwritings at the back of the door.

The only consolation he had was that there were so many people who had broken down inside his very same bathroom cubicle and written their worries all over the walls and door. 

Another possible consolation was that Choi Yeonjun fell for someone as wonderful as Soobin, and he couldn’t ask for anyone better. Soobin would be able to take care of him better. They looked good together, too – Beomgyu had seen it that morning where he woke up to Soobin and Yeonjun making some pancakes together in the kitchen. They worked so quietly. Hands moving in sync. 

They were making the pancakes for Beomgyu, and for a second back there Beomgyu had a silly thought of a possibility that the three of them could stay this way for a long time. That he could be selfish and wanted both his boyfriend and his high school crush. 

That maybe, just maybe, the three of them could be in love together.

Instead, he was awarded with a cold bathroom cubicle, with the ghost of Yeonjun’s words haunting him and the bite Soobin gave to his neck still stung his skin like a brand of guilt. 

There was no place for Beomgyu in their perfect little world. 

He had spent an hour inside the cubicle, and it was finally the time to go. He promised himself that the moment he stepped out of the place, he would get over it. Just like everyone else who left their worries written on these tacit walls. 

So, he wrote a note on a vacant space he spotted near the top of the cubicle’s door. A smile came to his lips easier as he poured the burden into that permanent scribble.

_I’m in love with the two most beautiful people in the world, so I want them to be happy without me._

Except, wanting and doing were two very different concepts

If everything had gone just the way Beomgyu _wanted_ , he wouldn’t be crashing into a dirty sofa at some classmate’s birthday party. He couldn’t even remember the person’s name, yet he was welcomed so warmly. He mildly wondered then if he’d be stopped by the door if everyone knew that Yeonjun had dumped him, but he would worry about that next time. Not when he needed the drinks.

The night slipped in and out of his mind. It went like a whirlwind. One moment he was pouring another drink, and then he found himself in the middle of a debate with Kang Taehyun about how time travelling works. 

It was Taehyun’s fault for actually using his brain to answer his innocent ‘do you think time travelling exists?’ question.

“Technically, it’s not possible since humans evolve against viruses and you won’t have the antibody that will help you stay alive if you go so far into the future. If you went back into the past, you’d be spreading the virus to the humankind of that era.”

“Well you wouldn’t know if that actually happened. What if that was the reason why some virus appears out of the blue?”

His half-brain reasoning actually made Taehyun shut up for a moment, brows knitted as he drowned himself in deep thought, but Beomgyu forgot about it as soon as the words slipped out of his mouth. He didn’t care about it, didn’t care that Taehyun tried to push him away when he slumped down the sofa with his head on the other’s lap. He only cared a little (or more) when Taehyun finally gave up and started petting his hair instead.

“You’re still as warm as ever,” he mumbled, eyes fluttering shut under the comfort. “Why did you have to hate me?”

“I never hated you.”

“You ignored me for years, Taehyun-ah.”

A sigh, then a ruffle to his hair. “I didn’t actually hate you. I just couldn’t get used to the new you after Yeonjun.”

“Was it that bad?”

“No, I realized that instead of losing yourself when you were in love, you’re the type to find yourself instead. It’s just that it was too late, and here we are now…”

Beomgyu was not sure if it was the alcohol, Taehyun’s words, or the thought of Yeonjun that made him choke with a wave of emotions. The relief knowing that his old friend did not hate him. The sadness that came with a realization that he was going to lose himself when he lost Yeonjun.

He already lost himself there, as he blinked his eyes into a party room blurred with tears, and the next thing he knew he was already sitting in a car. 

It was Yeonjun’s car. He had been right there in the passenger seat enough time to recognize it even with his face planted against the dashboard. The fact that it was not Yeonjun he found sitting next to him came with both relief and disappointment. 

“Hi, sleepyhead. Apparently you’re not only a drunk crier but also a drunk sleeper,” Soobin said. A smile on his voice. “Taehyun had to call us to pick you up.”

Us. The _us_ without Beomgyu.

It hurt more than he thought it would. But he would deal with it later. He always dealt with pain well.

“Traitor,” he mumbled, taking his head off the dashboard for a bit just to roll the window open. The cold breeze entered the vehicle and made him shiver, but it was better to feel it than having the ice lodged in your lungs. The way he had been feeling all day.

“What was your plan anyway? Yeonjun was panicking because you tend to cry when you drink too much and you’d need someone to hold you.”

He smiled bitterly at that. “Yet he is not here to pick me up.”

“He wanted to. He just didn’t think you wanted to see him.”

Ache. That was the feeling for every intake of breath he took. How did they go from being the only one who could handle each other into _‘I don’t think he wants to see me’_? They thought they were on top of the world, better than anyone else, more in love than any other couple that they could play the dangerous game without any consequence.

Now that it came to bite them back in the ass, they unravelled so easily. 

The tangled wools on Yeonjun’s feet whenever he failed his knitting session. The crash of coffee cup on the library floor when Beomgyu missed the counter. They were just a pair of mess holding each other intact, and now they forgot how to function together. 

“Soobin hyung,” he called out softly, earning a hum that made his heart thumb. The moment he said this, it would be the resolution that he needed. “You’re the only one who can handle Yeonjun other than me, so… I want you two to be happy. I hope you can make each other happy.”

It was the ending that needed to happen.

Silence dragged between them, lulled him into a fake sense of comfort. An acceptance. 

Until Soobin made a sharp turn. The vehicle came into a screeching stop, enough for Beomgyu to jerk up on his seat, eyes wide as he stared at the empty night street. His breath racing as his heart almost jumped out of its socket.

“What the fuck?” he yelled at the other.

“No, what the fuck is wrong with you two?” Soobin looked more pissed off, like he had the right to when he was the one who almost made Beomgyu’s heart drop to the floor of this car.

When he was the one who stole his heart for the second time and left the space empty to burn.

“What are you doing? God. Just drop me home quickly,” he demanded, gritting his teeth when Soobin only stared at him. Unshaken.

“Nope.”

“ _Nope_?”

“First Yeonjun told me that you two broke up, and now _this_ ?” Soobin spat, sounding angrier that he was supposed to, that Beomgyu could only eye him with round, surprised eyes. It was supposed to be _him_ who was angry. He’s the one with all these suppressed emotions ready to burst, and Soobin had the audacity to yell at _him_.

“Because that’s what actually happened?” he tried to yell back, only to lose his voice as he materialized the sentence from his thought. This became real the moment he said it. “That Yeonjun, they… broke up with me.”

“Did he, now?” he scoffed.

“What’s your problem, honestly?” it ended with Beomgyu snapping, throwing his arms up in defeat. Tears of frustration prickling his eyes. “Do you even know why it happened? You… you.”

“Me.”

Beomgyu blinked at him.

“Because you two were not actually in love in the first place that when I kissed both of you, it became the biggest dent in your relationship. Your feelings were easily swayed by a newcomer. To think that this is the couple who was confident enough to play with people’s hearts, when they couldn’t even keep their hearts from slipping away.”

Each word was dropped with venom. Soobin wanted to hurt, and Beomgyu could see from the iciness in his eyes. His warm, gentle Choi Soobin.

The worst thing: it only hurt this much because of the possibility of his words being true.

It might be the trace of intoxication in his blood that made Beomgyu blank out for a few seconds there. He didn’t remember unbuckling his seatbelt, or jumping over the console at the other. He landed some punches on Soobin’s chest and pulling at his hair, trying to claw at his face, and only registering that he was yelling curses at the latter when he was stopped by two large hands circling around his wrists in a bruising grip. 

It was sickening, how he went pliant the moment he was pulled into an embrace. His angry tears seeped the shoulder part of Soobin’s hoodie, as the arms around him gave him a comforting squeeze.

“I love him. I do love him,” he said, squeezing his eyes shut to let another drop of tear slide down his cheek. “It’s just that when you kissed me that day, I wanted _you_. I wanted you so badly that I lost the right to love Choi Yeonjun.”

He recalled their kiss at the library. The elation he felt when their lips touched, which turned into a ball of warmth that settled in his chest. That warmth fell into the pit of his stomach later on, reminding that it was only a bet, and he was not supposed to like it. He was not supposed to like Soobin for real. It grew into a ball of guilt, burning a charcoal space in his abdomen, burning him from the inside with guilt along with the bite Soobin left on his neck. 

That was the reason he couldn’t come to Yeonjun anymore. Not until he could forget the kiss.

Now he found himself losing both of them.

“You know,” Soobin cracked the silence, his hold loosening around Beomgyu that he could peer up at him. Their gazes meeting under the flickering street light. “Yeonjun told me he liked me.”

“Oh…”

“But he also said that he couldn’t love me the way he loved you. The way he loves you.”

Another sob climbed up his chest now, shaking him. “Why does it have to be so complicated?”

Soobin sighed, looking out of the window into the empty street.

“It doesn’t have to.”


	4. round 4: one, two, three

**Round 4**

**━━━━━━━** **one, two, three** **━━━━━━━**

It did not have to be so complicated. 

It was not complicated when Beomgyu came into that dance room that day and called Yeonjun beautiful. It was not complicated when he kissed Beomgyu for the first time, all lipsticks stain and artificial strawberry taste on their lips. It was not complicated when he asked Beomgyu for a dance, then asked him to be Yeonjun’s. 

It stopped being complicated when Yeonjun woke up that morning, into the familiar tufts of hair belonging to his boyfriend. Because that’s when he allowed himself an intake of fresh air.

His kisses along the tear stains on Beomgyu’s cheeks roused the younger, making him tense in Yeonjun’s hold for a bit, before he relaxed upon realizing that he was only getting the affectionate gestures from the elder. 

It went from a painful night in his bed where he fell asleep waiting for Soobin to come back after dropping his boyfriend home, into a warm morning where he woke up to his boyfriend’s face. 

“I’m sorry,” he found his voice first, breaking the illusion between them, and confirming that it was not just a dream. “For not telling you about the kiss earlier, for leaving you alone at the library, for making you think that we broke up.”

“We didn’t?”

“Did you really think that I’d break up with you?” he pulled back, giving the other an incredulous yet offended look.

A smile broke off in Beomgyu’s face, and he couldn’t hold back. His heart ached with how much love he had for him as he pressed a kiss to a corner of his lips. 

“Me too. I was feeling guilty because I wanted more of the kiss and it never happened before. I thought I was being a cheater.”

“We agreed about the kisses. What went wrong was that we stopped talking about it.”

Beomgyu grew silent. His eyebrows were drawn together in a frown, and his thoughts were so loud that it filled the whole room. Before Yeonjun got to ask, he was being pushed down on his back. Bubblegum coloured hair splayed on top of the pristine white pillow, and Beomgyu’s fingers found them first before their eyes found each other's.

“Promise that we’d talk more? Even if we do this game again, promise that we’ll never hide anything?”

“Promise,” Yeonjun breathed out, sighing at how beautiful Beomgyu looked. How he had forgotten about that when they were all broken and angry. How Beomgyu looked the prettiest when he was Yeonjun’s. “While we’re at it, let’s also promise each other to never propose that game ever again.”

Beomgyu laughed. His deep voice tinkling in the room, filling it with colours so bright the sunshine served no purpose anymore. “Promise. Can we start doing the talking part now? I feel like we’ll have so many things to unpack.”

“Alright,” Yeonjun considered, hesitating when his gaze dropped to Beomgyu’s lips, only to drag the male down on top of him. His mouth finding its place by the younger’s neck. “You do the talking first, and I do the kissing.”

The yelp that Beomgyu let out was the most adorable thing ever, and it made his heart flutter, reminding him that he loved making his boy flustered. That behind his attempts to look edgy and dark, Beomgyu would melt into his arms whenever he was given so much affections. Yeonjun loved to be the one to provide it.

It really did not have to be so complicated.

(Except it had to be, at some points. Like when Yeonjun got the urgent text from his friend, telling him that Beomgyu was alone at the party they were at, and that he was drunk. Yeonjun was his first everything. The person who was always around when he drank. It scared him that he was not there to hold Beomgyu when he cried from the emotions that would start hitting him when he got so drunk.

But he was more scared of what Beomgyu would show him if he had picked him up. 

After all, he never got the answer to the question

_ The question: _

_ “Are you not in love with me anymore?” _

and he did not know what to do if Beomgyu really confirmed that  _ yes, I’m not in love with you anymore.  _

“Soobin-ah, can you pick him up for me? You can take my car to drop him at his dorm,” he ended up becoming a coward. 

“I don’t mind doing it, but I thought you’d want to pick him up instead. Seeing how you’re so scared for him.”

“We… we might not be together anymore. I don’t know. He might not want to see me.”

Soobin’s face darkened at that, he even missed the set of keys that Yeonjun threw at him. “What do you mean? Why?”

“I told him that I like you.”

Silence hung between them, so thick that he could probably touch it. It wormed around his neck, suffocating him with each second that Soobin was not speaking. The sound of every passing second ticked so loudly.

“So what? You just stopped loving him?”

“No! What the fuck?” Irritation started to get into him. “I like you, but not in the way I love Beomgyu. It’s different, but it’s still our downfall, Soobin-ah. We kissed you, and now we forgot how to love each other. You don’t get it.”

“Then help me understand. You can’t just throw away this kind of relationship just because you like kissing me.”

“I’m not throwing it away!”

“Then what are you doing right now?”

“I’m running away,” he yelled, taking a deep breath now that he realized he had let the anger got the best of him. “I… I’m still not ready to hear him say that he doesn’t want me anymore, so until then… just until I’m ready. Can you do me a favour just this once?”

“Remember when you saw me outside the liquor store that time?”

Yeonjun blinked at him, taking a little too long to recall pieces of memories floating in his head. The warm summer night, cheap beer illegally bought, drunken shouts of a stranger and a familiar face holding way too many liquor bottles in his hand. Too heavy for him.

“I thought I was the coward and I had let you down back then, but you end up being the coward between the two of us. You are doing nothing but proving me right with every passing day since I decided to step up and talk to you.”

The words were quick to sink into Yeonjun’s chest, squeezing his heart so tightly at the painful slash of the words, and then the memory. The almost forgotten offer laced with the childlike urge to be a hero. 

_ “If you’re ready to finally live your life, you can talk to me at school.” _

So this was why Soobin talked to him that day. About three years late, but he stepped up, while Yeonjun was still stuck playing this childish game that cost the hearts of the people he loved.

“It’s not what you expected from me, huh?” he laughed bitterly, running his fingers through his own hair. A nervous gesture. “But are you the one to talk, Soobin-ah? Are you living your own life right now?”

Soobin stared at him, anger slowly dying down from his eyes, replaced by an anguished glint that made Yeonjun want to reach out for the taller male and pull him into his arms. 

“I’m planning to do that.”

Before Yeonjun could question it, Soobin already left, bringing a storm on his steps. He started fearing that he was not the part of this plan Soobin had to live his life.)

He thought about it over and over, wondering what he had said back then during the first meeting in high school. Wondering what Soobin had to prove wrong this time that they met again. He silently pondered over them the night before when he tried to sleep, and it was forgotten the moment he woke up to Beomgyu. 

The answer came to him when he was setting up breakfast, Beomgyu sitting on a high chair on the other side of the pantry, legs dangling off as if he was not 180cm tall. Sometimes he could make himself look smaller when he wanted to. 

“Soobin hyung told me that he knew about the bet all along, that it was fun watching us try so hard.”

It came to him as a fascinating surprise. “He did? Why would he still let us win the bet then?”

“Technically, he is the winner,” Beomgyu’s eyes were cast down, staring hard at the melting butter on top of his steaming waffle. “He wanted to prove that true love does not exist, that we will crash and burn during this game. We proved his points exactly.”

Yeonjun sighed at that, knowing that he had looked pathetic the last few days, breaking down just over the thought of Beomgyu hiding the kiss because he was not the number one in his eyes anymore. 

“We didn’t crash or burn, Beomgyu. We are still here, in love,” he moved to the other side of the counter where his boyfriend was, turning him around to face him. Their foreheads were pressed together, as he kept Beomgyu’s eyes locked with his own. “We are in love,” he repeated, watching as a smile made it to the pair of solemn eyes before his lips.

“We are.”

“And having feelings for Soobin does not change that. It’s not like we’d fall for the trick if it was just anyone else. It’s Soobin.”

Beomgyu nodded, the tension of his body visibly dissipated under the brush of Yeonjun’s hand along his thigh. Yet he was still worrying his lower lip between his teeth, voicing it out only as he was urged to  _ talk to me. Tell me what’s on your mind, gyu. _

“I’m just. Sad? For him,” he frowned. “I’m sadder because he thought that true love does not exist.”

And they were still talking even as they are potentially late to class. As they should be hurrying down the building and making their way to campus like any other students should with only ten minutes left in the clock, Beomgyu halted their steps by the front door. His hand held onto the sleeve of Yeonjun’s leather jacket. 

“Before we leave…” he started, fingers tightening around the fabric and tugging Yeonjun back into the place. “We are okay now, right?”

“We are, are you still worrying about it?” the elder smiled fondly, turning around to brush his fingers through Beomgyu’s soft locks. 

Instead of a relieved smile, he was greeted by a chestful of Beomgyu, as the male crashed onto him. His arms tight around Yeonjun’s waist. “Please take me back.”

They would most definitely be late for their class now, but Yeonjun could not care less as he engulfed his boyfriend into his arms, swaying them from side to side. 

“Silly. We never broke up in the first place.”  _ Never will. _

Yeonjun had stared at fear right in the eyes so many times through his life, and he never backed down before them. The first time he did, it was at the thought of losing his Beomgyu, and if that was what actual fear tasted like, there was no way he was going back there.

Now, he just had to figure out how he felt about Choi Soobin, and why he still couldn’t forget the taste of his lips.

**━━━━━━━☆☆━━━━━━━**

Everything settled back into place after the storm hit that night.

They went on with their days naturally. Walking hands in the corridor, making out at random parties, stolen kisses behind the library bookshelves.

Except the last part could not be the same anymore, not when Soobin left his mark in the library, that every time Beomgyu walked in, he would scan the room for any sign of the tall male. Not when they kissed behind this science book section that Beomgyu claimed as his hideout to break down over a single mistake on his quiz or make out with his boyfriend.

Choi Soobin disappeared like he was never there in the first place, but he failed to take his ghost away.

Yeonjun had noticed this too, wondering if Soobin was ever going to come home anymore.  _ Coming home _ was such a weird concept, because Soobin never agreed to make a home out of Yeonjun’s apartment. Yet it was so right to have him around. It was just two weeks of stay, and his disappearance caused a huge void to materialize in the middle of the apartment. 

Beomgyu brought it up after accidentally slipped an  _ “I miss him _ ”, innocent and natural, like he had been doing this for a while. 

Like he had been missing him forever. 

He only realized it as he looked up and saw Yeonjun staring at him with a mixture of emotions in his face. The last one that settled in his eyes was a sad one. “I know.”

This was not something to talk about in the middle of a room strewn with pieces of fabrics. The finished product, the dress Yeonjun designed for his freeform class, was worn by Beomgyu who stood in the middle of the room while the other dressed him up with utmost excitement twinkling in his eyes. 

“You like dressing Soobin hyung too, right?”

“Absolutely. I respect his broke college student fashion choice, but I don’t enjoy it,” he scoffed, earning a laugh from the later that earned him a hiss to stay still. 

“You only dress up people you think are attractive,” he stated. Out of the blue. 

Yeonjun’s eyes that found him are wary, careful. Beomgyu hated that the elder had to carefully pick his words when he’s talking about that particular person. This was so unlike  _ them _ . 

“Well, I don’t date everyone I think are attractive, right? I’m dating you.”

“But you wanted to date him.”

“Beomgyu—“

“No, why do we even have to pick? Why can’t it just be the three of us?” he didn’t give Yeonjun a chance to shoot him down about the topic. Not when he had been trying for days. And this was a perfect occasion because Yeonjun wouldn’t storm out of the room when Beomgyu could potentially ruin his project. “I mean, it works, right? We like Soobin hyung, and he must have liked us enough to kiss us, and we’re like in love with each other.”

“Are we?” 

“Shut up.”

Yeonjun dropped the mischievous smile from his lips, brows knitted as he traced his tongue along the inside of his cheek. Deep in thought.

“Anyway that’s if he wanted us. Or actually wanted us in the first place. He knew about the bet, remember? His only intention was trying to see if we’d break up.”

“He made us talk and fix things up, even got a little mean about it. Do you think he really didn’t care?”

He got the point across, he could see it from the way Yeonjun’s gaze softened. Hope flitted across his eyes for a second before he killed it again, sighing and stepping back from the middle of the room. Fingers messing up his perfectly styled pink locks.

“I’m tired of chasing, Beomgyu-ah.”

“I know…”

“It’s always been just the two of us. Even before we fell in love, no one else could understand us.”

Beomgyu stepped forward carefully, awkwardly in this pair of heels the other got him to wear to match the dress. He reached out for his hand, holding back the urge to hold him to not mess up the dress. But Yeonjun sounded so vulnerable. The way he looked when he asked Beomgyu to kiss him for the first time. 

This time, he was opening his heart for someone else that was not Beomgyu for the first time. 

“We’ve been alone all our lives, Soobin hyung too. That’s why we work well together. Don’t you think we’ll be better together when we are not trying to hide how we are feeling?”

Yeonjun released a long, shaky breath. Eyes squeezed shut for a brief moment. In the end, he nodded, squeezing Beomgyu’s hand back. “I love you, you know that, right?” 

“See, I told you we are in love!” he replied, finding it easy to joke around again now that he was not feeling like his stomach was not being tied up by invisible strings.

Loving shouldn’t be so complicated. The only thing Beomgyu was sure of was that he was in love with these two. And that was enough.

If only everything else that came afterwards was also that easy to deal with.

“Okay, we will talk to him… but only if he wants us, too. You know he hasn’t answered his phone for days.”

That was a problem, but not one that would get Beomgyu to give up on trying to contact him. Not even as he had to stare at the unread messages he sent to the hyung under the blanket at night in hope it would channel his energy to get a reply.

That’s how he found his way to the council room where he could find Kai, the only person who might have an idea on Soobin’s whereabouts.

Instead, he found Heejin there, eyeing him with interest when he still walked in upon seeing that the person he tried to find wasn’t present. 

“You must be a fortune teller,” he started.

Heejin stared at him in confusion for a few seconds before she snorted. “Is this a pick up line? Am I your next target?”

“No! You told me that the game I’m playing with Yeonjun might potentially ruin us in the future, and it kinda happened… so yeah. You saw it coming.”

“You still did the game after my warning, so you kinda deserved it,” she scoffed, throwing her hair over her shoulder. 

The sound of loud laughter broke the room first, making Beomgyu flinch on where he stood, before his attention was gathered at Kai who climbed up from behind a table. His hair in disarray and his glasses knocked off his nose. 

“He’s saying that you’re right, Heejin. Give him a break!” Kai said, seating himself up the meeting table. 

Heejin glared at him, but finally loosened up as she turned to look at Beomgyu again. Her gaze softened. “You owned up to it in the end, so you’re not so bad. I was only warning you because I’d hate to see you and Yeonjun fight.”

“Thank you.”

“Will you vote for me for the council election then?” she’s back to beaming after that, but Kai scooted to cover her from the sight.

“No, Beomgyu hyung is sooo going to vote for me,” he said. And honestly, Beomgyu didn’t care about the whole campus politics, and probably would have donated his vote to the trash can, if only it was not for the mysterious smile the younger was giving him. “You’re here to find Soobin hyung, right? I might know where you can find him.”

“You do?”

“I don’t know if he’d forgive me to share this, but he needs someone, hyung. And I want you to be there through his hardest time.”

Excitement faded from Beomgyu’s face the way his smile faded from his lips. A sense of foreboding closed around him.

The address Kai texted him did not fill him with a sense of security of knowing where Soobin was. It filled him with dread, knowing that Soobin took a sick leave from the campus, and now he was in a hospital in Ansan. 

Every step that took him to Yeonjun was heavy, every second he passed not knowing if Soobin was okay made his heart ache and his breath stuck in his lungs. 

“It will be okay. He will be there to greet us,” Yeonjun said, but even he did not seem so convinced by how he tripped on his own feet trying to race him towards the front door. 

It would be a nightmare to face Soobin and hear from his own mouth that he never liked them, but Beomgyu would take that over all the possible scenarios going through his mind right now. It would be okay if Soobin didn’t like him back, as long as he would still greet him with his dimpled smile and the light in his eyes.

**━━━━━━━☆☆━━━━━━━**

Soobin was always wary about the consequences of wanting more. 

He had learned early in his life that it was futile. It started from wanting his mom to visit him more after the divorce, only for her to visit even less, and eventually stopped visiting him when she moved out of the country. When he wished for his dad to stop being busy and spend more time with him, the man quit his job when he entered high school and became a full-time alcoholic. 

“It’s a phase. Let him mourn in his own way,” his relatives told him then, so he just had to sit down and stop wishing for better. They always told him that it would get better.

Except, it never got better, and he eventually got too used to blend into the shadow, thinking he had no right to wish for a brighter place.

The first time he met Choi Yeonjun, he denied himself of what he wanted, too.

It was the last year of high school. 

Everyone knew the Choi Yeonjun who was always in the spotlight and nagged everyone who did not follow the school’s rules. Everyone did not know the Yeonjun who chugged down cheap beer by the street and watched with his foxy eyes when Soobin’s dad dropped him by the liquor store and yelled at him to pick up his order.

The withdrawal was the worst of it. First hour of the drinking meant a relaxed, father-like dad who talked to him about his grades and his future. The third hour was when he started to cry, missing his ex-wife who was now happy with a better man. The next hour was when he started to get angry, which was Soobin’s cue to lock himself in his room to avoid getting yelled at. And the next hours afterwards would just be him slumped face first into the toilet floor, in which Soobin had to wake up in the wee hour of the night just to take care of him. 

So when Yeonjun grabbed the bag of liquors from his hand, dumped it in the car, and took him away from the vicinity, it was the first time he was allowed to breathe freely.

“Do you have to do everything that he asked you to?” he asked then, lips parted to gasp for air after running a few blocks away, glistening under the flickering street light.

“He’s my dad.”

“And you’re living his life?”

Soobin couldn’t say anything to that question, and Yeonjun did not push him, until the night finally welcomed the dawn, and they eventually had to part. As Soobin about to go back to the nightmare that was his home, Yeonjun dropped the offer.

“If you’re ready to let your dad take care of himself and finally live your life, you can talk to me at school.”

He wanted to. He wanted to stop falling asleep at school and interact with his classmates. He wanted to hang out with friends like everyone his age did. He wanted to ditch his father to take care of his own. 

But he knew the consequences of being greedy. He would take Yeonjun’s disappointment over his cowardice than to step out from the shadow towards the light that might burn him down. 

Yeonjun must be disappointed when they met again, knowing that Soobin had taken a year leave to take care of his father when his condition got worse. He obviously knew, especially from his question.

(“But are you one to talk, Soobin-ah? Are you living your own life right now?”)

He had not been living his life under the constant phone calls from his relatives over his dad’s illness, which only worsened ever since he left home again to go back to uni. If this was the Soobin from high school, he would go back into the shadows again. 

This time, he had found the reason not to.

The light had everything he ever wanted to. It had the library talks with Beomgyu and non-coffee drinks that came with the sight of animal hats and fluffy sweaters the younger liked to wear. The light had Yeonjun and his mini fashion show around the apartment, or light night debates over whatever b-grade movie that was showing on TV.

The light had Beomgyu and Yeonjun.

It took one look into their eyes for Soobin to make up his mind.

Even if he was not a part of the couple’s kind of true love; the flirting game and finding home in each other’s arms, the absolute trust and adoration, he was content to finally escape the shadow that had been looming over him for half his life, and bask in the warm light the two brought upon him. 

The first time Soobin woke up in the hospital bed, there was no one around. It was cold, and eventually painful when the anaesthesia worn off. But he was free. The weigh was lifted off his chest for the first time in his life, when the surgery was meant to lift up something else from his body. Quite literally.

This was the price he had to pay for the promise.

(“Promise me, that if I donated my liver to you, you’re going to go to those AA meetings, and you won’t bother me with your fucked up life anymore.”)

It was priceless, the look in his father’s dull face, that first time he ever asked for something in his life ever since the divorce. The divorce that the old man failed to handle wisely, so it cost him a deteriorating liver from all those drinks, and a failing relationship with the only son who decided to stay with him. 

And then there was the loneliness, until his doctor came to check up on him, telling him that everything would be perfect once he rested some more. 

If only life was as easy as closing your eyes and having everything perfected for you.

The second time he woke up on that bed, he had to mentally apologize for mocking his doctor’s words. 

He woke up with one of his arms losing blood circulation, numbed completely that he was about to panic until he realized that it was the fault of this person lying his head on top of it. The familiar cotton candy hair glared at him. 

As he turned to the other side of the bed, he registered the warmth of his hand being held, while Beomgyu scrolled through his phone with one hand. He only realized that Soobin was awake after being stared at for a full three minutes, eyes widening quite adorably.

“You’re awake.”

“I am,” he croaked out, throat dry from all the sleep. It gave him an excuse to stay in silence when he took his water, staring at Beomgyu’s solemn eyes, and the tear tracks down his cheeks. The exhausted look in his face crushed Soobin’s heart. 

“We rushed here when we found out about you being here, I… I thought something happened to you. My heart almost dropped,” Beomgyu finally said, brows furrowed, as if he had been thinking about these for the whole time he waited for the elder to wake up. “It hurt, the thought of you leaving us just like that.”

“I meant to tell you guys beforehand, but with everything that went on...”

“It hurt more that you never told us about this, hyung,” he spoke up again when Soobin trailed off. His voice wet. The unshed tears travelling down to his throat. “Why do you have to suffer alone?”

“I’m sorry.”

That was all he could say, biting his lower lip while Beomgyu tipped his head back to swallow back his tears. “It’s not your fault. We should’ve done better, especially because we practically live with you, yet Kai was the one who knew about everything.”

“Kai was… a little pushy.”

“Well, we should have done that instead of busy trying to get you to kiss us. After all, we are the ones who fell in love with you, not Kai.”

The sulky tone was adorable, but what he said caught Soobin off guard, making him freeze. Eyes dazed as he stared at the frowning male. 

Yeonjun picked that moment to stir awake from his sleep. He straightened himself up on his seat, yawning and ruffling up his hair. He looked so messy for Choi Yeonjun who always spent too much time perfecting himself before facing the world.

“Beomgyu, we agreed not to get to that part yet. Don’t overwhelm him,” he said once he was awake enough.

“But it’s true that we like him. I just want Soobin hyung to know.”

“It’s too complicated though, let’s focus on letting him recover first.”

They could go on and on for an hour. Soobin had seen it the last time they had a ‘civil discussion’ about what to order for dinner, had watched with his stomach grumbling in protest until he took the lead and ordered pizza for the three of them. This time, too, he caught their attention by clearing his throat. 

“ _ He _ is here, listening to you guys, and he wants to know what you guys are talking about,” he deadpanned.

They both stopped, averting their gazes somewhere else now that they had to speak to him. Yeonjun ran his fingers through his own hair and tugged gently on the strands. The gesture that Soobin had associated with him for whenever he was nervous.

And finally, he spoke out.

“Remember that messy night before you left us? We talked the day after and… don’t panic, we realized that we liked you.”

Soobin blinked slowly. “You two told me that already. A little too late to realize after telling me.”

“No! What he meant is that… we realized that we like you, and we want to date you, too, without losing each other in the process,” Beomgyu chimed in, his voice softer, but sure. He was sure of what he said, but he was scared. Even as he was holding Soobin’s hand again.

“I don’t get it. You don’t like me in that way.”

“No, Soobin. I told you that I couldn’t love you the way I loved Beomgyu, and it’s true, because I can love you the way I love  _ you _ . We will do that if you let us.”

Beomgyu nodded, squeezing Soobin’s hand to get his attention to him now. “And we just need to know if you’re in…”

“We don’t have to rush things, though. No pressure at all, Soobin-ah.”

“Yeah, hyung. I know you’d be confused by the arrangement, and we’ll have a lot of things to talk about because hey, Yeonjun and I are also a newbie at this. But if you let us…”

It was too much, almost overwhelming. Yet Soobin could only feel the flutter of his heart at the thought of Beomgyu and Yeonjun’s  _ us _ becoming his  _ us _ as well. It was the excitement flowing into his system, filling up the emptiness that came with stripping himself off the shadow within him. The light filling him now was warm, he might choke from how different it felt from the coldness he had gotten used to. 

It was love.

Really, love did not have to be so complicated. All he had to do was to stop thinking.

And stop thinking, he did.

“Stop it, you two,” he finally said, cutting off whatever panicky bickering the two were engaged in again while he zoned off. “No one could leave unscathed after playing that silly bet, and that’s including us. There are so many things to unpack, to make it up for. But while we are at it, can’t we just make it simple and say that the three of us are dating?”

The silence that followed after was so thick, but not in a bad sense. There was an air of hope hanging between them instead of a painful waiting game. 

Beomgyu was the one to inhale the air, taking it into his lungs and letting a smile brighten his face. He even discreetly wiped a bead of tear from a corner of his eyes.

“Yes! See? I told you he would get it!”

“Fuck, my heart almost dropped into pieces just now,” Yeonjun whined as he dropped his head, rubbing his face into Soobin’s chest while he laughed. 

As he run his fingers through Yeonjun’s messy hair, he found Beomgyu’s eyes again, which had now settled into a fond gaze at the sight of the two. 

“This is not another one of your games, right?” Soobin couldn’t help but asking, a hint of playfulness in it. 

Beomgyu shook his head, his hand never letting go of Soobin’s ever since he woke up, and he got a feeling that he would be stuck in this position for a long time. His hands occupied by not one, but two warmth. The warmth of Beomgyu’s hand and Yeonjun’s hair under his fingers. 

He didn’t mind it.

“No more flirting game,” Yeonjun confirmed sleepily. “Just dating.”


	5. round 5: game over, continue?

**Round 5**

**= game over, continue? =**

Ever since Soobin was discharged from hospital, there had been a lot of talking and adjusting. It was less about their relationship, however, since Beomgyu and Yeonjun were busy taking care of him instead.

It was his fault for agreeing to it in the first place.

(“Okay, but before we get to the whole dating stuff, there is this,” Yeonjun said later on that day, gesturing to Soobin’s torso.

“What about me?”

“The nurse said that you have to be on bed rest for at least two weeks afer we get home, and now we have to come up with a plan to take care of you,” Beomgyu said, nodding firmly as he towered over the bed with his arms folded over his chest. With his fixation over making everything perfect, of course he would stress over the detail.

“Say, Soobin-ah, will you let us take care of you?”

How could he say no? When Yeonjun was giving him the whole begging cat look – all rounded eyes and pouty lips.

It was Beomgyu’s request that made him cave in the end. 

“Will you come home with us, Soobin hyung?”)

That left him busy with his own thoughts, especially as he watched the two juggling with their assignment and him. So much for not thinking. 

The only good thing that came out of it was that he realized several things when he was bedridden:

1.It was not that bad, being greedy for once.

The two took it seriously when they made the schedule. During the empty spots of their schedules, they would hang out in Soobin’s room, even when they were busy with their own thing. 

What was supposed to be the small, spare room was soon filled with more laughter, furious keyboard typing noise, and late night hushed conversations. 

There was Beomgyu, who had left his mark in this room with his guitar in the corner, printed arts on a display wall he made especially for Soobin, and a dent on the bed in the shape of him as he liked to curl up when he took naps next to him. 

“Did Yeonjun dress you up again?” he asked one time as Beomgyu was about to leave for his afternoon class, clad in a leather jacket and ripped jeans that couldn’t be that warm to be in. 

“Uh, no. Last time I told you that, it was just an excuse. My fashion sense is better than theirs.”

“He would burn your hats if he heard that.”

“Don’t tell him!”

Soobin laughed, reaching his hand out towards the latter. And Beomgyu was always ready to reach back for him, walking back towards the bed. This time, Soobin’s hand found the loop of his jeans, tugging him closer.

“You look beautiful.”

Yes. He still loved to see the warm flush spread across Beomgyu’s cheek. The younger seemed to find it hard to get used to his compliments. “I thought you only liked the stupid hats.”

“What, you really thought I came over by the library just to see your hats and not _you_?”

Beomgyu yelled and left the room, cupping his cheeks on the way out and saying something about being late for class when there was still thirty minutes left in the clock. 

Yeonjun left his mark on _Soobin_ instead of the room and the noises.

It was not so noticeable at first, until Soobin realize that his clothes were slowly migrating towards a box in the corner of his closet, almost taking it badly at first until he saw the row of clothes that replaced them. All of the clothes were in the same style as the ones he owned, just more fashionable and fitting for his body.

“It’s just something I found at the design room,” “someone didn’t want it anymore and I thought you might want one,” “I don’t like the style anymore so it’s yours” were his excuses at first, until Soobin found the purchase receipts.

“Just let me pay for them, and stop buying me clothes,” he said in exasperation one day as he called him out, frowning at the elder who was equally sulking by the door. 

Yeonjun stomped his heel on the floor, huffing. “Fine then you can pay me with something else.”

The new clothes in his closet cost him a painful hour being locked inside the bathroom, with Yeonjun happily humming while applying the hair product on his black, healthy, virgin hair and he watched in horror as the colour was stripped off his hair. 

The bleaching ached, but it was paid off when he looked at the end result after Yeonjun dried his hair. The pale blue hair looked pretty good on him, and it matched the pastel of Yeonjun’s hair as he stood next to him by the mirror. 

“See, I knew it would look great on you,” Yeonjun beamed at him.

He would endure those long hours of bleaching and colouring his hair all over again if it meant that he would have Yeonjun smiling at him like this each time.

2.Time was not a problem for once in his life. 

He had all the time in the world waiting to be discharged from being the prisoner of the bed. His doctor was more lenient about him moving around, but he could do almost nothing under the scrutiny of his two _boyfriends._

They seemed to think that it was a problem, though.

It started with a silly request at first. The Sunday that was also the last day of Soobin’s bed rest before he could go to the hospital for another checkup. Yeonjun was resting by his side after shower, hair still damp with the scent of peach shampoo wafted towards the latter. Meanwhile Beomgyu’s constant shrieks could be heard as he was attempting to use the waffle machine.

“Let’s have a bet,” Yeonjun said out of the blue, gathering Soobin’s attention from the book he was reading.

“And I thought you’ve had enough of that for a lifetime.”

“Come on. We’ve never had an actual bet between us, it’s just me and Gyu.”

Soobin rolled his eyes, setting his book aside so he could shift his position and face the elder. “Fine, how does this go?”

“Let’s bet on who will fall in love with each other first.”

“Okay?”

“I will do it in five.”

“Weeks? Months?”

“Four… three… two…“ 

Yeonjun kissed him then; the taste of strawberry exploding behind the contact of their lips. Always strawberry. It felt like inhaling after coming up from the depth of water, and Soobin welcomed the oxygen, drawing the other closer to him. Gentle hand curled behind the small of his back, while his fingers tucked a stray strand of Yeonjun’s pink hair behind his ear.

There was only the sound of his heartbeat for a while, until a yell ripped across the room.

The bed dipped under Beomgyu’s weight as he attacked them. “I heard you say the L word!” he yelled, tugging on Yeonjun’s shirt while the elder just laughed gleefully at the attack. “We agreed not to do that until we’re sure that Soobin hyung is ready!”

“I was sure of it though!” 

Soobin only intervened when Beomgyu tried to claw at the elder (Yeonjun, in fact, was not the only cat in this household), drawing him inside his arms in a tight lock, until he was rendered motionless in fear of hurting Soobin and his surgery scar. His back pressed against Soobin’s chest, and he looked so small in his arms, it hurt Soobin physically.

“So... I lost the bet just now so I have to win this one.”

“What bet?” Beomgyu frowned.

His answer came in the touch of Soobin’s lips along the shell of his ear. Soft whisper caressing the sensitive skin.

“I love you.”)

3\. The pain never meant to last

It started from a nightmare from his childhood up to the college days where he was always alone because of the shadow he was forced to stay in. And then continued throughout the time he felt alone, even when he was being chased by the two most wonderful people. 

Now that he let them in, he realized that he was being physically surrounded by love. 

The purest kind of love. The kind that hugged around him the way Yeonjun’s arms did when he couldn’t sleep at night. The same kind that greeted him good morning along with a kiss to his forehead and a twinkle in Beomgyu’s eyes. 

The kind that filled him with so, _so_ much adoration whenever he stepped out of his room to Yeonjun falling asleep in the middle of his knitting session, balls of yarns strewn around him making him look like a napping cat. The kind that turned his irritation into lovesickness whenever Beomgyu would kiss him in the mouth to shut him up in the middle of their bickering sessions.

Now that he tasted the kind of love that the two could give, Soobin finally realized that they both sucked at flirting.

There was one lonely boy living under the shadow of true love being non-existent, and then there were a pair who played a dangerous game. But all good things came in three, just like this one. 

Soobin realized it as he woke up one morning to the three of them sleeping on his bed. Bubblegum pink hair tickling his nose, while Beomgyu curled up by the other side of him, fingers peeking out of his sweaterpaw and tugging onto the fabric of Soobin’s shirt.

Soobin realized that _this_ was worth the pain of being a victim of their flirting game.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was a comission from Paltita! Thank you so much for trusting me.  
> The whole time writing this piece was a ride, i'm so sorry that this had to be so rom-com-ish with the bet and everything, I just wanted to write yeonjun in skirts and the whole thing happened. My initial idea was to also show the transition from an established relationship into poly from the couple's side, but then it turned to be so simple the moment they talked because well, the whole thing lays in the communication!  
> If you get this far, then you have endured the 30k words of a messy writing, and I would congratulate you first of all. Also some feedback would mean a lot to me. You can also find me on [twt](https://twitter.com/soogyulvr) and [cc](https://curiouscat.me/soogyuphobic)! ty <3


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